Heat of the Summer (Atlanta Burns Again, Act II)
by Aldenata
Summary: Part 2 of 4. Remnants of the Georgia Militia continue fighting for their lives as the enemy advances and their supplies dwindle. New findings offer a glimmer of hope to their resistance, as well as horrors that may signal the end of the human race. 52% Complete
1. Timeline and Music

**Interim Timeline:**  
[Will be modified and expanded as the series progresses.]

2010:  
Late November- alien motherships arrive in orbit and over the cities of Earth. Some countries fire upon the ships to little discernible effect. Among the more civilized nations, contact is attempted, with no response.

- The ships remain in place and unmoving for weeks. Fear and chaos reign beneath them; commerce breaks down and supplies of essential goods grow scarce—urbanites have no food, ruralites have no fuel, suburbanites have neither. Hungry, scared and angry mobs embark on massive exoduses from one place to another in hopes of finding the necessities of life, with typically tragic consequences. America's Federal Emergency Management Agency, barely able to handle localized incidents of purely terrestrial origin, is completely overwhelmed. The military, there and elsewhere, is forced to step in and split the difference between monitoring the aliens, maintaining order and providing humanitarian aid.

Without firing a single shot, the aliens inflict seven hundred, fifty thousand human casualties within the first two months.

- Overstretched military and police commanders begin seeking the assistance of civilian volunteers in certain roles, invoking the common law authority of posse comitatus. Innercity and hinterland participants don't ask and don't tell in regards to the surprisingly potent, military grade weapons that many of the volunteers bring to the table.

Mid or Late December- first shots of the invasion fired. The world's militaries are disintegrated by orbital bombardment and weapons roughly analogous to neutron bombs. Electronic circuits, even many sheltered ones and those designed to resist the effects of EMPs, are destroyed. Aliens make landfall and begin securing the near-lifeless cities.

2011:  
Early January- remnants of the human militaries, in preplanned coordination, launch major counterattacks against the aliens. Though ferocious, most are ultimately unsuccessful in the face of vastly superior numbers and firepower. Aliens expand their captured territory, just enough to make the center areas safe from artillery strikes.

Mid January- construction of towers begins; first harnessed children sighted.

February 2nd- alien troopships begin leaving the planet, and their occupation forces show a marked decline in quality and quantity. Human forces are emboldened by this turn of events, and in the coming months some strategists argue for renewed offensives against their positions. Others contend that humanity is too weakened to risk itself in another potentially fruitless assault on a still far superior foe, arguing for containment and research instead.

Early January- *webcomic begins*

February 10th- aliens begin renewing their expansion attempts. Despite their weakened state, pitched battles against them remain all but suicidal, especially when bombers are brought into play. Remaining human resistance moves even further away from set piece conflict in favor of elastic defenses and manuver[1] warfare.

February 14th- *Atlanta Burns Again (Part I) begins*

March 10- Disease, exposure and starvation have killed almost as many humans as have been killed from the aliens. But conditions improve as winter draws to a close. Many resistance cells find that they can now focus on research moreso than merely fighting for survival.

April 18th- *Atlanta Burns Again (Part I) ends*

April 19th- alien forces seem to be getting reckless with corpse disposal and humans are finally able to get their hands (and scalpels) on the remains of Skitters, Mechs, airships, and harnessed children. Within a week, scientists and other "authorities" warn that Skitters should not be butchered or dissected by untrained professionals, claiming among other things that they contain certain glands which are highly toxic.

April 23- *Atlanta Burns Again (Part II) begins*

May 27th- rumours of harnesses inside Skitters begin to spread. Researchers contend that these are merely surgical implants and should not be taken as proof that the Skitters were created by the harnesses, or that human children will turn into Skitters. Some of them may actually believe it, too.

June 6th- first known successful unharnessing of an enslaved child carried out at the North Carolina Research Campus in Kannapolis. Word of the operation spreads quickly... as quickly as it can in a world where news seldom travels faster than the speed of a galloping horse.

June 19 - *webcomic ends*  
*tv series (season 1) beings*

June 26- first known attempts by skitters to communicate with humans: shooting harnessed children as a warning against trying to retrieve them, and offering not to attack human forces in exchange for help acquiring children.

June 29- first use of harnessed children in combat by the aliens. Not a common tactic owing to their generally poor performance, relatively high value, and the difficulty of supplying and maintaining human weapons.

July 1- first widespread use of captured human bullets by mechs.

July 15- early attempts at jamming skitter communications.

July 17- first semi-widescale use of reverse engineered mech and bomber energy weapons by human resistors. The aliens themselves have begun phasing out energy weapons due to supply and power shortages.

July 30- first use of melted-mech metal by humans. While a very interesting subtance, it ultimately has little to offer over more conventional rounds. Rumours of mech-metal bullets having unnatural destructiveness turn out to be false.

July 31- first sighting of slenders in the open.

August 7- numerous assaults launched across the world against alien towers. Heavy casualties on both sides and, despite the use of the new jamming technology, results are indecisive.

*season 1 ends*  
*Atlanta Burns Again (Part II) ends*

September- *Battle of Fitchburg* possibly the last major act of human resistance in lower New England

Early December- arrival of the Batmen.

**Recommended Music List**

The Band- The Night they Drove Old Dixie Down

Blind Willie Johnson- John the Revelator

Bobby Horton- Riding a Raid

Charlie Daniels Band- The Devil Went Down to Georgia

Charlie Daniels Band et al- The Devil Came Back to Georgia

Claude King- Burning of Atlanta

The Clancys- Rising of the Moon

Evanescence- Fallen

Evanescence- Going Under

Gorden Lightfoot- Pride of Man

Holly Golightly and The Brokeoffs- Burn Your Fun

Kastorski- Molitvu Proliju (I will pour forth my prayer unto the Lord)

Leadbelly- In the Pines

Louvin Brothers- What are Those Things With Big Black Wings

Lupe Fiasco- Battle Scars

Lupe Fiasco- Little Weapon

Moses Hogan- We Shall Walk through the Valley in Peace

Neil Young- Old Man

Old Sledge- There Ain't No Ash Will Burn

Redgum- I Was Only 19

Rudyard Kipling- Recessional

REO Speedwagon- Ridin' The Storm Out

Sacred Harp- 42 Clamanda (Say Now Ye Lovely Social Band)

Sacred Harp- 146 Hallelujah (And Let This Feeble Body Fail)

Sacred Harp- 505 Cleansing Fountain (There is a Fountain Filled With Blood)

Thomas Tallis- Incipit Lamentatio Ieremiae Prophetae (The Lamentation of Jeremiah the Prophet begins)

Thomas of Celano- Dies Irae (Day of Wrath)

Waylon Jennings- Rebel Soldier

* * *

1. This is not a typo, it's a spelling decision. Maneuver derives from the French manœuvre which itself come from the Latin manuopera (to operate by hand, from wince also comes the word "manure"). Given all that, it seems to me that omitting the "e" in manuver is acceptable.


	2. Prologue

_Like one, that on a lonely road_  
_Doth walk in fear and dread,_  
_And having once turn'd round, walks on_  
_And turns no more his head:_  
_Because he knows, a frightful fiend_  
_Doth close behind him tread._  
-Samuel Taylor Coleridge

* * *

******23** April, 2011  
**2 miles north of Adairsville, Georgia, USA**

The sun was going down over Interstate 75, casting long shadows from a collapsed overpass and the hulks of several jet airliners that tried to land on the highway. Two horsemen and two wagons—a large covered farmer's rig and a smaller tachanka[1]— rolled around the wreckage and up the ramp, carrying a load of spare parts and diesel to a nearby farm.

Sixteen year-old Staff Sergeant Ritchie Keating of the Gordon County Home Guard couldn't help but notice pieces of a 1988 MR2 lodged in the wheel assembly of an Emirates Airlines Airbus A380. Hard to tell if the plane had actually landed on it or if the road crews had jumbled the two together in their haphazard road clearances that turned much of the road into a canyon bounded by junk. His squad had just taken possession of the cargo near the county line, and he was glad to be getting off the big wipe-open road and onto a small and narrow one; it had been so long since anything but death fell from the skies, and he'd never see them the same way again.

The liquid gold of sunset gave way to the icy blue of twilight; it was cold for April and was probably going to rain that night. He cradled the Norinco-knockoff Coach Gun in his lap as he reclined in the seat. It was a pleasant ride, they almost always were. They were mostly armed with shotguns and pistol-caliber weapons deemed "too wimpy" for front-line use, but no one seemed to mind. Their only threats had been feral dogs and the occasional human highwaymen. He and his six compatriots felt at ease amongst the trees and bushes.

Right up until one of them came alive and jumped at the lead horse. The rider had no time to react before the skitter yanked him off and gave him him a throw. Two more hit the covered wagon and flipped it over. Another two dropped from the trees, one atop a horse and rider and the other on the tachanka gunner, grabbing her by the head and dropping to the ground with her. As the horses cried out in fear, a shot rang out, then a scream and the snap of a human neck. It was an almost-perfect ambush.

Ritchie grabbed his up shotgun. The closest hostile was grappling with a draft horse and he gave it both barrels. The horse was hit and by stray buckshot and would lose an ear and an eye, but fared much better than the skitter. Next he re-manned the M1895 Colt Machine Gun and stitched the one that had taken down the gunner. Corporal Sarah-Jean was hit by errant bullets and would lose her left hand, but she likewise fared better than her attacker.

Though pinned beneath his wagon, the other shotgun-rider sprayed a surprisingly effective stream of fire from his TEC-9, injuring at least two skitters. One more took a kick to the face from one of the horses. Having taken so much damage, the ambushers decided the convoy wasn't worth it and grabbed up their dead and wounded, running through the treeline with humans firing wildly behind.

The skitter raid leader was happy. His losses could be replaced, his wounded would heal, and his actions would certainly compel the humans to use more and better fighters in the protection of their food suppliers. That would make his job harder, but it would make things easier for his people fighting for control of the city. As he ventured deeper into the hills, he pondered his next move. An attack on one of their factories would be most fruitful, as would an attack against their remaining educational establishments, where so many harnessable humans are kept.

"How many?" asked Sheriff Ralston, surveying the carnage by the morning's light.

"Two dead, three seriously wounded." replied his deputy. "Three horses beyond recovery"

"And them?"

"Unknown. Two or three probably dead, as many badly injured. Or at least that's the eyewitness report." he noted. Eyewitnesses, in the dark, surprised and fighting for their lives. "Weather's on their side too, it's going to be a pain trying to find out where they went before they get airlifted out, even if they are hauling wounded."

"Looks like human marauders are now the least of our problems." stated the deputy.

"First they hit the Williams Farm, kill half his hogs and drag off his boy," said the Sheriff "now they do this? They're waging war on our bellies, hitting the farms and transports."

"Indeed. So what do we do about it?"

"We have to increase security, we'll ask that some of the local militias be recalled from Atlanta."

"Atlanta won't like that; they're holding on by a thread as it is."

"I won't like it either but the choices are clear: the Fifth Brigade can either lose a few units to redeployment now or lose all of them to starvation later."

Ralston looked into the forest. If they could raid this far out, they could raid anywhere, and they had enough hiding places in there that bringing the whole militia home would do little to stop them. Their enemies were learning the war of the flea, and they'd never see the woods the same way again.

* * *

1. A cart with a tripod-mounted machine gun in the back. These were used in Eastern Europe between and during the World Wars as a means of mobile machine-gun support and anti-aircraft defense. Think of it as a ancestor to the technical: gun-mounted pickup trucks so common in modern bush wars.

Notice that this version uses a smaller, slower-firing weapon than would normally be employed for that roll; I'm assuming that better equipment is closer to the main fighting.


	3. Chapter 1: Licking Our Wounds

_"Rest is as valuable to a soldier as food and ammunition. No army can go for any prolonged period of time without some sleep."_- Anonymous

* * *

***Diary Entry: Monday evening, April 25th, 2011***

Sergeant Sarah Tagliabue reporting, now of Alpha Squad, 2nd Platoon, C Company,12th Regiment, Fifth Brigade, Georgia Militia.

I know it's been awhile since I last wrote. So, what's new for me to say?

Short story: Battle of Inman Yard. Great big ruckus. They attacked us. We killed a few of them, they killed a few of us. I haven't got over whatever funky bug I had. Still weak, still having trouble keeping anything down, still have to camp out near the latrines and a lot of the others are in similar shape.

Long story: eh still working on it. I'll write it on some loose notebook paper and glue it into the appropriate area when I get a chance. [update: done]

12th Regiment was reorganized and G Company as we knew it disbanded. I'm now part of C company (doing it the other way around would have made changing the insignias easier, but whatevs). My comrades are still mostly North Georgia boys and girls (Whitfield, Murray, and Gordon Counties for the most part). Good people.

John Toland is still here with us: turned 70 a few weeks ago but he holds his own in combat. The late Captain Hallock's grandson recently enlisted with us: 14 years old last week and he's fighting in spite of loosing most of the fingers on one hand. Says his favorite banjo player (Barry Abernathy of Mountain Heart) didn't need ten fingers so neither does he. One thing's certain, I try not to complain too much about my widdle stomach aches whenever the boy's around.

I actually have a 16-year-old serving under my command, which I suppose makes me a war criminal, the kind of person I marched in protests against in another life. We still try our best to keep kids out of direct combat, if only to keep them from being harnessed, but with spiders crawling all around us there's not a place left on the planet where they're truly safe. We're down to robbing the cradles, graves, hospitals and asylums.

Is that wrong of us? Maybe, probably, but better we be punished for our sins than for our virtues.

We're in the ruins of Plant McDonough now, which is surprisingly homey in spite of being heavily bombed. There's a thunderstorm raging outside right now and it makes any excursions miserable. I remember spring being pleasant, but it seems these days that if it ain't hot and muggy it's wet and cold.

On the bright side, maybe it'll wash the pollen out of the air. Pollen never bothered me before but for some reason it's starting to really make its presence felt.

Strategically speaking, the spiders have pushed to just shy of the I-285 Perimeter in most areas. We in the northwest are holding along the Chattahoochee River from Whittier Mills to Cochran Shoals. It's a pretty simple setup really, we have our riverbank and they have theirs, with occasional raids and probing attacks by both sides.

The northern front is also a lot less complicated these days: we finally relinquished Buckhead and they've now pushed into Chastain Park and the DeKalb-Peachtree Airport.

The northeast and east are now the interesting areas: Clairmont Road marks a rough battleline from the Plaza Fiesta Mall all the way down to the VA Medical Center and Clairmont Campus, but there's quite a bit of back-and-forth going on in that area. I hear that there's a human salient holding along South Fork Peachtree Creek as far as Herbert Taylor Park, but this may not be true.

South of that my knowledge becomes even more sketchy. I think we still hold the eastern half of Decatur, but they looped around it and took most of Belvedere Park. We're trying to pinch their access there on Memorial Drive, but those efforts so far have failed.

The southwest is as interesting as ever: we're dug in on Shoals Creek in Candler-McAfee and Panthersville and all the way down to Columbia Drive and the South River (one of only two areas, to my knowledge, where they've breached the I-285 perimeter, the other obviously being around Hartsfield Airport).

In the south, all of Gresham Park north of Constitution Road and west of Moreland Avenue is theirs, but they seem to be losing ground in the far south. An enemy push into Forest Park was repelled just beyond Macedonia Cemetery, and parts of Hapeville and College Park were recaptured.

The western front seems to be pretty settled, same as us. We're holding Dobson Drive all the way up to Point University, then along Ben Hill Road, Childress Drive and Lyndhurst Drive to the Westridge Shopping Center and the nearby high-rise apartments. From there it cuts northwest to Fredrick Douglas High School and Berean Seventh-Day Adventist Church and due north along Hamilton E Holmes Drive up to James Jackson Parkway.

Which brings us back to Whittier Mills and the 12th Regiment. So there you have it, a pretty little circle.

[Standard disclaimer applies: all of the above of is hearsay, most of it is dated none of it is reliable.]

Well, that's what it looks like on a map. In real life, our lines are so porous that I don't think anyone takes the idea of containment seriously anymore. That's okay, their lines are porous too. I'm glad the spiders ain't throwing everything they have at us now, they may well be as depleted as we are. I heard it said recently that the strength of the Fifth Brigade (that part of the Militia active in Atlanta) is down from a height of two-hundred and eighty companies to one hundred and sixty (so maybe 24,000 personnel in varying levels of fitness), about half of those are combat deaths and the rest are rear-area redeployments… or, less charitably, desertions.

(Quick not on desertions: in theory, a militiaman can come and go as he sees fit. In practice, there are certain… duties that militia members are expected to abide by once they've become part of a fighting unit. Those duties and what happens if they fail to meet them are often left to the discretion of their officers, their peers, and possibly local authorities outside the combat zone. I don't know if we have any Cold Mountain kind of stuff going on, but it could happen if our manpower situation gets much more desperate.)[1]

Tactically, we're in pretty good shape. C Company has 70 combat-effective fighters under its command, plus 39 combat-ineffective fighters (walking wounded) and 38 camp followers (children and psychiatric casualties mostly, plus non-walking wounded). Each squad has either a heavy sniper rifle and/or a heavy machine gun, plus a fair number of light machine guns. We have plenty of explosives, mostly in the form of satchel charges and rifle-grenades, but ammunition is still a problem for us and our camp-followers have to work non-stop repacking cartridges. We have a herd of miniature horses and donkeys to haul it all (bunch of old swaybacks who would have probably been too tough to eat, not award winning stock by any means but they get the job done) plus bicycles for almost every member and a few ATVs, motorcycles and pickups for when we absolutely have to get somewhere in a hurry.

Morale is an issue. We all know that we'd have to fall back if a major push was launched across the river, but sturdy defenses and constant drilling offer some reassurance. Still, it can be pretty painful to be standing watch at night and hear people crying in their sleep, knowing that you probably do the same.

Food is an issue too, but things are getting better thanks to our successful hunting, trapping and gathering efforts. What food we do have is... well, more pleasant than the weather.

Water is no problem at all. We're on the bank of a river and we now have a more enjoyable means of filtering it:

The Hallocks ran a dry company with no alcohol and no drugs stronger than caffeine, though enforcement was never all that rigid and it really broke down during the protracted fighting at Inman Yard. Our commander in C Company allows low-proof alcohol, marijuana and tobacco. Amphetamines are issued for soldiers pulling long shifts. They still have strict regulations against anyone becoming drug-impaired while on duty (show an inability to hold your beer and you're banned from the still), but it is an interesting development which might help keep people from brewing that nasty prison hooch that was common in G Company.

I was always too scared of getting fat to be much of a drinker. Ganja is bad for your IQ and go-pills are bad for your sanity, but I do use both to try and stay standing, in fact I had to tweak up a bit before writing this (hope it don't show). Hopefully I can go straight-edge after the camp fever wears off.

Well, if there's anything else for me to say I can't quite remember it. My squad has foraging duties tomorrow plus I'll be pulling guard later. I'm getting sleepy and I think I'm going to turn in.

* * *

1. Cold Mountain was no gospel-truth docu-drama, as Michael Swaim of all people pointed out, and most Home Guards weren't as brutal (or competent) as that movie portrayed. But some were. I had two ancestors shot and hanged (yes, shot and hanged, they shot them then they hanged them) by the Georgia Home Guard after the Battle of Resaca. They then hanged a man in who's barn my ancestors had slept for harboring deserters. Said ancestors had received written leave of absence from their commanding officer, but the Home Guard apparently dismissed this as a forgery (which, in all fairness, it may well have been) and didn't even bother checking with anyone in the Army of Tennessee.


	4. Chapter 2: Thunder on the Niger

_"Whenever you see a toad jumping in broad daylight, then know that something is after its life."_  
-Chinua Achebe

* * *

***interlude***  
**Aba, Nigeria, northeast of Port Harcourt**  
**13 January, 2011**

January was the driest, windiest time of year in West Africa, and incendiary weapons had turned much of the continent into a wasteland. Thankfully, the damage didn't seem as bad as one got closer to the ocean.

Colonel Jacob Ikedi Aliyu rested his G-3 on the side of the Humvee as the rest of his mechanized column rolled through the town. The alien anti-electronic weapons had affected Africa, but not to the extent that they reportedly had in the northern nations. Whether this was providential or merely an oversight on their part was not known to him, but either way he gave thanks to small miracles.

When the northern nations approached the southern nations, shortly after the arrivals, what they had said made a lot of sense. The Americans and British and Chinese and French all brought cases full of dossiers (flash drives might be hacked and couldn't be trusted) with plans and contingencies for what they would do if the aliens acted in a certain way. Aliens do A1, we do B1. B1 fails, move on to C1. B1 succeeds, skip to H1. Aliens do A2 see column B2. It was brilliant.

Well, actually it was full of flaws, but at least the First World planners had been freed from the worries of fighting a real war to consider such things. Not so the Nigerian war planners, worried more by the spectere of attack by some discontented tribe or elements of their own army than they would ever be by an attack by demons.

But, these demons were known to bleed, and the Nigerian Army had a plan for making them bleed more: everyone go to the capital city of Abuja. Destroy the forces occupying the centre of the country, then move outward, push them to the borders and move on into neighboring counties, all of which had their own infestations. It seemed like a simple plan.

Well, actually it was stupid. As the most populous country in Africa, Nigeria had eight cities under attack by the aliens. Many of those lay on the roads and rails that the military would presumably have to travel to reach Abuja, after moving hundreds of kilometers and leaving their homes and families to an unknown fate, just so the bureaucrats and military brass could get their precious capital back?

Nope. First the Islamic North told the Central Government to go spit; they'd deal with their problems in Kano, Maiduguri and Kaduna, then maybe help fellow Muslims in Ibadan and Abuja, and perhaps even the coastal infidels in Lagos and elsewhere (more likely, they'd be heading for Niger). Soon to follow were the Igbo southeasterners saying much the same regarding their preference for Port Harcourt and Benin City and their disinterest in dying for barbaric Hausa-Fulani and manipulative Yorubas.

Nigeria was a mess. Nigeria had always been a mess, and it seemed all the oil investment money in the world would do little to change that. As for Colonel Jacob Ikedi Aliyu, his Igbo family ties meant he'd be splitting from the government. He and other Igbos in his unit had defected to the New Biafran Army with as many small arms as they could carry and went to work passing them out. When they ran out of guns, they told their new recruits to "make the best use of anything that could potentially kill mortal beings."

Thankfully, remaining loyalists in the Nigerian Army probably wouldn't be marching on Biafra or the other splinter states. They had considered it, but it seemed their Yoruba and other non-Igbo, non-Muslim troops were no more willing to die for another tribe's land. Things were testy, none of the big tribes really wanted to work together, but it seemed they'd refrain from shooting at each other until their common enemy had been dealt with.

Aliyu wasn't sure just how many men would fight alongside him tomorrow. He knew that MEND and friends had announced that they would come to their aid, as had the Bokassi separatists. The Itsekiri and Ijaw had also settled their differences for the moment, and the rival Ijaw groups had declared a truce. As far as aliens went, it seemed like Biafra might be easier to defend than Nigeria. The terrain was more likely to limit the advantages of a high-tech enemy, only two of their cities had been occupied, and they had fought this kind of war not too long ago.

The Nigerian-Biafran War had seen three million Biafrans killed in a deliberate campaign of blockade, starvation, and total war against the civilian population. Aliyu's family had some truly wrenching stories from those years; their people had won almost every battle against the government forces, performed some incredible strategic feats, but couldn't win against an enemy who cut off their supply lines early, had more men than they had bullets, and felt no compulsion to fight fair.[1]

"We should bivouac on the far side of the Imo River.", said "Jan Zumbach",[2] pulling the Colonel from his contemplations. "There's plenty of tree cover, civilians have already evacuated the area, and it looks like a good spot to begin the sunrise assault."

"Ah, yes, right. We'll set up the divisional HQ here, we'll gather the battalion and company commanders and hold one last briefing tonight."

…such that they were. The dearth of experienced officers in Biafra meant that Colonels often shouldered the responsibilities of captains, and vise-versa.

"Very well." murmured Jan Zumbach.

Aliyu sighed. "And you'll get one last chance to tell us all that we're launching a suicide charge, we can all agree with you and at the end we'll nonetheless unanimously decide that it's still the best course of action."

Zumbach smiled. "Well said, General Ataturk."

"Men, I am not ordering you to attack. I am ordering you to die. In the time that it takes us to die, other forces and commanders can come and take our place." said Aliyu, quoting the Turkish general's remarks at Gallipoli.

Jan Zumbach, a Polish oilfield mechanic who had never offered his real name, nor his reason for staying in Nigeria when the ships came but jumping ship when Biafra split, didn't have a day of military experience. Nonetheless, he and others like him brought a sorely needed level of leadership to the Biafran army. In many ways, he played Otto Liman von Sanders to Colonel Aliyu's Mustafa Kemal. It could only be hoped that they would have a similar effect against their invaders.

**Port Harcourt, Nigeria**  
**14 January, 2011**

Private Obed Okoro arose before the dawn and wolfed down some breakfast before being goaded into formation by a Scandinavian captain who liked to sing about some guy called Roland, a warrior from the land of the midnight sun with a Thompson gun for hire and fighting to be done. He wished he had a Thompson gun, but was thankful to have any gun; he had slept with his Lee-Enfield firmly in hand lest someone trade it for a shovel or pickaxe handle in the night.

There was a dust storm blowing from the north, curtailing visibility. That could be a problem; as he understood it, the commanders had decided against a night attack for fear that the aliens had night vision devises when most of them didn't. Private Okoro didn't know much about thermal imaging, but he did understand that their power could often be decisive when only one side had them. If nothing else, it might cause trouble for the planned creeping barrages.

Several hours later, his pickup truck was following behind a Vickers Mk III and some Scorpion light tanks on their way to something he was starting to wish he could avoid.

"So much for our artillery." said another soldier as several enemy craft flew overhead from a successful bombing run. "They'll be coming after us next."

Pillars of smoke were starting to rise from the city of Port Harcourt and the alien mothership above it. (Just what do they think would happen, he wondered, if they actually managed to shoot that thing down?) The Katyushas and Field Guns had done some damage in the couple of salvoes they got off before being destroyed, but it looked like the Liberation of Port Harcourt would be a close-range affair.

At the sound of the bugle Private Obed Okoro charged across the intersection with the rest of his company. He took a knee and fired his rifle at the nearest monstrosity— the bullet hit center-mass and seemed to only stun it. A second round tore through one of its legs and appeared to cause it more trouble, and a bullet to the head finally dropped it. Body armour? Should have expected that.

He dove to the ground as a blast from one of the enemy machines washed over him. A nearby Vickers tank exploded, rounds cocking off and turret flying through the air, landing gun-in-the-ground like a burning metal lollipop.

His squadmate fired a grenade from his modified shotgun, blowing away the alien devise. He pulled Obed up and they both dove behind an overturned BTR-80 as they came under renewed plasma fire. Another monster scrambled over the top and ripped the grenadier's head off. Obed emptied his rifle into it and his squad finished it with bayonets. He picked up the shotgun and fired it into a cluster of machines, but the grenade went short and only served to obscure them. Thank God they didn't seem to have thermal vision.

"Mind your elevation, son; those grenades have more drag than you might think." yelled his sergeant, diving behind the APC to reload his BM-59.

"Yes Sergeant, I'll remember next time." said Obed, laughing. He had to laugh to keep from crying.

"Won't be a next time if we don't get out of here. As soon as we get the chance, I want all of you to…"

A salvo of mortars and volley of rockets from the roof of a nearby hotel temporary cleared the intersection, buying them a few moments reprieve. He heard the bugler call retreat

"…GO!"

Private Obed Okoro was deafened by the barrage, but he didn't need hearing to know what to do. He ran towards the hotel with the others, changing course as the whole building burst into flames before them. He found cover, fought, fell back, found cover, fought, kept fighting and kept repeating it for as long as was needed.

**Obigbo, Nigeria**

"It's all my fault." said Colonel Aliyu, fighting to keep his composure as the bloodied remnants of his army streamed back across the Imo River.

"No one could have known this would happen." said Zumbach. "Their ground forces weren't half that effective in the first days of the war."

"Be that as it may, we tried taking to the offense and now we've made sure that we can never do so again. So what do we do now?"

"Now? We hold along the Imo as long as we can, get as much of the POL infrastructure to safety as possible, hope to God that the rest of the world did better, and... well..."

Zumbach didn't really know what to do now either. But that was okay; the Igbo and the rest of Biafra had fought well that day, and they would keep fighting well until none of them were left. Aliyu said a prayer for his son who had taken part in the battle and was still among the missing, as well as his children abroad, in Britain and America. Indeed, maybe things had gone better for them.

* * *

1. Gary Brecher/John Dolan reports that the Nigerian Air Force and their foreign pilots never bothered to attack a single military target during the course of the war. I don't know if that's true, but from what I know of similar bush wars (Katanga, South Sudan, North Yemen) it doesn't seem unlikely.

I'm always amazed how little-known this war is in the first world, and what little we do know about it seems to be due to some guy called Jello who thought it would make a good last name. Lingering guilt might have something to do with it; Nigeria was the better investment option, so their actions were either ignored or abetted by most of the industrialized world. Good picture of what happens when one's food supply gets cut off.

2. Reference to a WWII Polish fighter ace who lead the Biafran Air Force under the pseudonym of John Brown. One of several European volunteers/adventurers/mercenaries who fought in that conflict and a very fascinating individual.

* * *

_…in the winter of '69 we were hungry, just barely alive,_  
_By January, Owerri fell, it was a time I remember oh so well…_


	5. Chapter 3: Mystery Meat

_"He was a bold man that first ate an oyster."_  
-Jonathan Swift

***Diary Entry: Tuesday Afternoon, April 25th, 2011***

Rain eased off today and it's actually been a pleasant afternoon. Here's to small miracles. There's a soft wind blowing and the humidity is down. If we don't get ambushed I'm going to say this was the best day we've had in quite awhile.

We had "lobster" for breakfast, and we'll probably have more of it again for dinner. That seems to be the popular term for whenever the chefs are less than forthcoming as to where they got their meat.

That euphemism really doesn't do much for me. I do like lobster, but I grew up close enough to the New England coast to recognize it for the overpriced, overrated product that it is. Funnily enough though, whatever we had in our stew today really did taste an awful lot like some kind of seafood.

My squad went out this morning with a number of the camp followers and pack animals. They're all whining about being subjected to the horrors of being made to work for their food, but they'll get over it. The heehaws and horsies don't seem near as plaintive as their handlers. Maybe they're worried about what happens if we come back empty-handed.

Stores were all more or less a bust, as expected, but we had better luck looking for edibles in our increasingly re-wilding city. I'll discuss this in more depth when I get back to the plant.

***Diary Entry: Tuesday Evening, April 25th, 2011***

Got back without a problem. This has been a good day.

As I was saying, we found some pretty good patches of Silverberries and Elderberries. Normally I treat exotic wild berries the same way I treat exotic wild mushrooms (not worth the risk), but we had a good forager with us who helped make sure that no one picked any water hemlocks by mistake.

There was also as the ubiquitous Dandelion, Dead Nettle, Curly Dock, Chickweed and Kudzu. Saw some wood sorrel too, but not as much as we'd like just yet. I'm also rather surprised that we found no pokeweed and few cattails along the Chattahoochee River. Other gatherers most likely got to them before us.[1]

We caught a good number of sparrows and starlings in our snares and traps. They're itty-bitty birds, not worth plucking, but you can cut the meat out and cook them just like squab. I used to eat starling all the time as a child. I even ate crow… once. Local farmers thought my family was nuts but they never asked too many questions when my brother and I showed up with our .410s offering to eradicate the pests for them.

Back then we had to make sure no one had recently set out any poison nearby, just like we had to make sure that the ground we picked our dandelions from hadn't been sprayed, but neither are much of an issue nowadays. Heavy metal poisoning still is, but with so much lead in the air a little cadmium in the dirt is the least of my worries.

We also caught two possums in our live traps. Possums are wonderful animals: big bags of fur and fat cleverly disguised as giant rats to ward off the unadventurous and so stupid that you hardly have to leave out bait for them. Yet as a species they seem to be doing better than we are. The city is crawling with them and they really come out after it rains, searching for grubs to eat.

Speaking of grubs, the rain brought out legions of earthworms and we gathered up a good many. We're not using them for fish bait though, not exclusively at least. What we do is leave the worms in water for an hour to purge their digestive tracts, then we boil them to clean away the mucus and roast them like bacon. The First Nations commonly relied on smoked worm meat to get them through the winters and, like them, we're not willing to pass up on such an excellent source of protein.

Well, some of us are. This look into the nature of our food supply doesn't sit well with some of the newer camp followers, and a few of them swore they'd never eat "lobster" again. Fair enough, but before long I think we'll see them back at the cafeteria's meat section.

There's just not enough kosher food left for us to be picky. Our resupply from the outside world has dropped to a trickle and going after only what we'd prefer to eat would be an iffy proposition even if we didn't have to fight a war at the same time. Bottom line, I think we can all expect a great deal of lobster in the future, if we're lucky.

***Diary Entry: Wednesday Morning, April 26th, 2011***

I heard... bagpipes playing across the river all night. The tunes would be interrupted every now and then by gunfire. I think someone's using the noise as a spider trap, which will probably bring them much amusement up until the spiders get tired or it and call in some air support.

Guard shift just ended and soon I'm going to go get some hot dandelion root coffee. Captain Hall doesn't like us writing on guard duty and I guess that makes sense, but I'm becoming such a fast writer that I can find other times to do it. He encourages us to keep records of what's happening, I suppose for posterity's sake.

It rained all night but started to taper off a few hours ago and it looks like we're going to have a thick fog bank coming off the river, but I still have a pretty good view from up here in the smokestack. All in all, I think we're in fo

…for another good day? Maybe I wrote too soon.

As I was writing those words, I heard gunfire beyond our northwest wall. Lasted for about half an hour before our patrol came back in. They had bumped into a force of robots and spiders, taking a number of casualties before they could disengage. More details later.

***Diary Entry: Wednesday Afternoon, April 26th, 2011***

Maybe it will be a good day after all.

They killed two spiders and five robots, while suffering only two seriously wounded. That's pretty incredible, considering what usually happens when we have to fight on an even field with them.

They seem to have left one of their dead behind. They'll usually carpet-bomb an area rather than let a corpse fall into our hands, but it's just lying there in the street right now and nothing's happened so far. We're going to sneak back out there and get it, and if we don't get nuked for our troubles this could be quite the find for our research teams in Smyrna.

I saw some of our injured and it looked to me like gunshot wounds only. One of those involved said he didn't see a single burst of plasma fired during the shootout. That's interesting, and also lines up with things I've been noticing about the quality and quantity of enemy forces. I'm going to bring it up tonight at the Wednesday meeting, and if possible it might be worth a few telegraphs to Regiment and the other companies. It would be great if this war is wearing on them as much as it is on us.

* * *

1. For anyone interested in plant foraging, a good resource to check out is Green Deane's eattheweeds dot com and youtube videos. Keep in mind that many edible plants share their habitats with toxic look-alikes, and it's best to know what those are and if at all possible do any gathering with someone who has some experience eating the local foliage.


	6. Chapter 4: Imperative Subterfuge

_"When an opponent declares, "I will not come over to your side," I calmly say, "Your child belongs to us already... What are you? You will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time they will know nothing else but this new community."_  
- Adolf Hitler

* * *

***interlude***  
**12th Regiment HQ**  
**Smyrna, Georgia**  
**29 April, 2011**

Staff Officers were seldom among the first things to run short in a major war, but Colonel Randall Berry did wish he could find a few good Chiefs to help manage his Indians. Even with rebuilt telegraph lines, even with him spending half his time liaising between companies and battalions, it was all he could do to keep any regular contact with his direct subordinates and colleagues.

The obvious thing to do would be to create more of them, but Berry and many other command officers felt it better to do without than to do poorly. It was once said that it cost 15,000 casualties to train a major general, and it was not much cheaper to train a major.

But, if the Regiment seemed like a distant, overburdened, unresponsive organization, Brigade and higher commands were truly ethereal and anamorphic. Which was why Berry was so surprised to be dealing with three men from military intelligence, bringing the newest comprehensive report on the alien occupation forces, all the way from… where did these guys say they were stationed?

"We didn't." said their presumed leader, a stern-faced fellow in plain, slightly ratty-looking fatigues who nonetheless looked like he might have been more comfortable wearing a sharp black suit, black shades, and ear buds. He even still had the fancy locked briefcase where his kind kept their itineraries and Uzis. That these masqueraded Men in Black stood in a canvas tent that wouldn't have looked too out of place in the camp of Robert E. Lee only added to the uncanny aura. Had they been of the proper nationality, he would have probably called them the Rivington men.

"Well, ok then. So… how many Bothans died bringing us this information?"

If nothing else, the war had done much to enhance the Colonel's predilection for snark. Their little memo was reasonably well-written and well-organized, leaving fewer holes in information and logic than many that had come before. Its only problem was that it told him absolutely nothing that he didn't already know or strongly suspect.

Mr. Senior MIB Agent gave something that could almost be taken for a knowing grin. He motioned at his two associates, who got up and took watch outside the tent. Then he opened his briefcase and removed a small leather-bound notebook, laying it on the desk.

"What's that?"

"Colonel Berry, this is the portion of our report that's actually worth the paper it's printed on." he said. "Sir, by order of the Interim Governor of Georgia, under no circumstances can the information that I'm about to give be disseminated without prior approval from high command."

Berry didn't bother to ask questions as to the fact that Georgia had an interim governor. In a few minutes it would be the last thing on his mind anyway.

"…so let me get this straight: you've conducted successful alien autopsies, found harnesses attached to the spine beneath their skin, think that the ones attached to our children might be slowly transforming them, are trying to hide this discovery, want me to help you keep it hidden… and you expect me not to shoot you?"

"I expect you to do what you have to do to keep your Regiment intact. What do you think will happen if the general public finds out? They'll go nuts, that's what. They'd launch banzai charges that would make those planned by Japanese in defense of the home islands look half-hearted. And for what? So that, at best, they can recapture their kids and tear out their spinal cords?"

"That would be a damned sight better than letting them turn into monsters!"

"We still don't know if harnessed children will metamorphose, in fact our scientists doubt it."

"The same scientists who have yet to find a way to removed the things?" asked Berry

"They're getting close" responded the agent, ignoring his sarcasm. "Read the rest of the report: blunt force works… sometimes. Hit the things just right and they shut down… hit them just wrong and the patient dies, but we're working on it. We've taken more dead spacebugs—and at least one POW— and harnessed children in the last month than we've taken since the war started, and other state militias report the same thing; we think it might be because someone, somewhere has already unlocked their secrets."

"You think a lot of things. How much do you know?"

"Not much, to be honest. Remnants of the United States Army Medical Research and Materiel Command are leading the research efforts at the North Carolina Research Campus in Kannapolis. Step one was getting enough live subjects to do any research at all—still not exactly an easy task. Step two has been trying to keep them alive long enough to cure them—opiates show promise, but the hard part is trying to find any these days. Even heroin has mostly been used up in the war effort and it's going to take time for the new poppy fields to show any significant returns."

"So what do you want me to do?"

"Keep your subordinates from dissecting any spacebug corpses they capture. The first thing any competent military commander would want to do is find out what makes their enemy tick, and that means putting the first dead one on the chopping block.[1] We have our cover story, but we can't trust in that alone; write up a list of your more trustworthy people and if the need arises we'll explain to them why they really can't have their units performing any unauthorized dissections."

Colonel Berry sighed. "You do know, of course, that you can't possibly keep this quiet forever?"

"Honestly, I'll be happy if it lasts for more than another two months. Do you have any more questions for me?"

"Just one: sir, do you have any teenage children?"

The Agent ruminated on that question for a moment, only a moment.

"We were hand-picked for our assignments. One of the prerequisites is that we have no living families."

"Fair enough." murmured Colonel Berry, noticing his emphasis on "living". "You said you'd be staying here for the night? Good, I already have bunks assigned for the three of you. I'll reread this document and give it some more thought before choosing my next course of action. If you're still alive tomorrow, you can take it as a sign that I agree to play ball."

The Agent semi-smiled; Colonel Berry had taken the news better than most. "Whatever you do to me. Be sure to destroy what you've read when you're done with it."

* * *

1. This is a big problem I had with the TV series. I can't for the life of me understand why dissecting a skitter wasn't one of the very first things attempted by the 2nd Massachusetts or Pope's Gang as soon as one fell into their hands. Anne found out that stabbing the things in the mouth was a good way to kill them (quite frankly, even those of us who have palates tend to find that a tad uncomfortable), but what else could be learned from going straight to work carving one up? Instead, they just let it rot in the basement for three episodes. Made all the more confounding by the fact that Harris/Dr Wings had wanted to slice and dice the thing from the get-go.

Granted, a lot was going on in those intervening episodes (the whole 7th Mass Quisling thing) and we didn't have a perfect idea of how much time passed between them.


	7. Chapter 5: May Day

_"Most armies are in fact run by their sergeants - the officers are there just to give things a bit of tone and prevent warfare becoming a mere lower-class brawl."_  
-Terry Pratchett

* * *

***Diary Entry: Wednesday Night, April 27th, 2011***

Spent the afternoon trying to sleep off another bout of sudden-onset nausea, woke up long enough to drag myself to Wednesday night service which is wrapping up right now. The discussion focused mostly on Cornelius the Centurion in the tenth chapter of the Book of Acts. Our chaplain, Second Lieutenant Rodney Byrne, is just finishing a series on the Roman forces in Judea during and after the life of Christ, as well as the various rebellions against them from Judas of Galilee to Bar Kokhba. Shame I missed out on most of that.

I didn't notice this at first, but C Company may well be every bit as nepotistic as G Coy was. Captain Jackson Hall has son-in-laws and nephews holding many of the squad and platoon leadership positions. This holds true for many militia groups and was even truer in the past, when federal agents and budget-justifying entrapment schemes were still their biggest problems. Less need to vet someone whom you've known since birth I suppose.

Thankfully, competence seems to run in the family. Most of our sergeants either already had some form of military experience or picked up on it quickly. As for Captain Hall, he seems to recognize the disadvantages of a pure clan system and fills his own headquarters with competent outsiders, especially Northwest Atlanta natives.

Well, I always did say that I preferred mom and pop operations to big franchise deals.

Something else worth noting: Clan Hall might not be so Prohibitionist, but they are every bit as Pentecostal as Clan Hallock was Baptist. Church services are held four times a week and they're quite insistent that we try being in the pews for at least one.

…not sure how I feel about that. I mean… I did like what I heard tonight, but I won't even slow down to tender my resignation if I see any rattlesnakes come Sunday.[1]

Going to reorganize my pack and go back to sleep. The war council has been rescheduled for early tomorrow, as two of our Lieutenants and a good portion of the NCO's have taken my platoon's trainees out on maneuvers. (And didn't wake me up for it... I'm not at all happy about that.)

* * *

***Diary Entry: Thursday Morning, April 28th, 2011***

They had us up as soon as 2nd Platoon got back from their training maneuvers, well before sunrise. The captain, all three lieutenants, most of the thirty-six sergeants and quite a few enlisted men were in attendance. I brought up my observations on our enemy's declining potency, and others agreed that they seemed to be losing steam. We're not entirely sure what benefit it'll be to us, but if they're weakening it might be time for us to be more aggressive in our overall strategy.

Someone [Staff Sergeant Holt: Bravo squad, 1st Platoon] suggested increasing the standard size of 1st Platoon's fireteams from four men to six and we spent most of our time arguing the pros and cons of that arrangement. Pros=more firepower, better ability to absorb damage, more tactical flexibility. Cons=our NCO's may not have the skill to handle it, it'll potentially cause us to move in bulkier and more easily spotted groups, and the typical disarray that arises from any reorganization.

I didn't get to stay for the whole thing, because I had to attend a briefing for an upcoming recon across the river. The captain caught me on the way out and asked to speak with me when I got back. Oh no…

* * *

***Diary Entry: Saturday evening, April 30th, 2011***

We were at it again. Me, some of our better scouts and the camp followers of my platoon were doing some on-the-job training in the industrial area between Bolton and Riverside. Formerly two nice little neighborhoods (1950's-style inner-suburbs and 1930's-style mill village, respectively) that were ravaged by invading yuppies before the spiders came. Sometimes I'm not sure which did them more damage.

There's been a disturbing increase in activity along Bolton Road and up as far as Chattahoochee Trail Park. They're still not on the river itself, but it looks like they plan on setting up camp in the sewage and cement plants just across from us. So for the last three days we've been making observations and taking notes on their movements in the general area. We were in, we set up our nests, did our job without a shot fired and were gone with the setting sun: it was a textbook operation and I must say that I'm quite proud of my subordinates.

Weather was good. Quit raining after the first day and it hasn't been that hot or humid.

I spoke to the Captain as soon as I got back to the power plant, and all I can say is…

…oh no.

He wants to promote me again.

I… don't want to be promoted.

I mean, the only reason I ever made buck sergeant is because I served at the Battle of Inman Yard. I think everyone present there got a promotion, even the dead. If that, as Captain Hall claimed, is really more experience than what most our able-bodied junior NCOs then we really are in trouble.

He says that many of our convalescents and trainees are gaining enough health and experience to count as combat effective, and he wants to form a fourth squad in 1st Platoon with me as its leader. I asked him about Sergeant Holt's idea of increasing the size of fireteams, and he said he wanted my thoughts. He gave two documents to read, Flexibility and the Fire Team by James H. Webb and M249 Employment Concepts by Jeffrey L. Eby, and told me to give my opinions of them tomorrow.

* * *

***Diary Entry: Sunday morning, May 1st, 2011***

Probably the first church service I've ever been to with a banjo picker leading the hymns. No snakes, but I was a little freaked out when the pastor started praying in tongues.

Pastor Byrne read out of Acts 4:31, and discussed the unity and service that God desires for all of His people, and how we have to work together in a world that is very much enemy territory.

He also talked about a bout his background. He said that May 1st was always celebrated as the start of summer when he was a young boy in Ireland, and historically it was always a time of happiness after the cold, snowy winter and wet, muddy spring.

He mentioned that the King James Version Bible turns 400 years old tomorrow (congrats, though I still prefer the New Jerusalem Bible), and at the end Captain Hall took the podium to announce that these next three days would be a time of recuperation for the entire company. He didn't want us slacking off, though. No, our weapons and equipment are all showing signs of raggedness and he wants them and us all in top shape by the time we all go back to work on Wednesday.

Interesting. Sounds like R&R, but isn't? Does he know something that I don't?

* * *

***Diary Entry: Sunday afternoon, May 1st, 2011***

Captain Webb thinks too highly of the M16 (too anemic against spiders, and far too finicky for use by the average haphazardly-trained militiaman—most of ours are given to the young, old and infirm or traded off to cavalry units, who like them for their light-weight and compactness), and Warrant Officer Eby thinks too little of the quick-change barrel (want thereof is one reason why our RPKs and Valmet M78's often stay in the reserve squads and armories).

I considered Webb's article to be reasonable, and felt that larger fireteams may well be a good idea. Eby made a lot of sense too, but I wasn't sure how to act on his advice, as we don't even use M249s anymore. They share so many of the same problems as M16s. We use even heavier guns, M60E3s and M240Ls, as our standard machineguns, plus a few others that we've picked up here and there. Is it really a good idea to trade those out for something that would undoubtedly give us a much smaller volume of fire?

Captain Hall doesn't think so, at least not right now. He says firepower matters more than maneuverability for the moment, and that our current shoot-to-scoot ratio is adequate. But what about in the future? What if we're in a position where we have to shoot, close with their enemy, take ground, give ground, and in general do a lot more running around than we do now? (And again I ask: does he know something I don't?)

The Marines actually have something like this in their new M27 Individual Automatic Rifle. It seems to be a BAR reincarnated: full-auto, magazine fed, less extravagant ammo use, big enough for suppressive fire but nimble enough to work in close quarters, accurate for a machinegun…

…and well beyond my experience, so I shrugged and told him so. Guns were a regular part of my pre-war life, but ours were shotguns, hunting rifles, handguns, great-granddaddy's Ross Rifle, the M1 Carbines our dad got us (remember, we were hippies in the Abbie Hoffman sense) and the odd boyfriend's SKS or AR15. Not squad automatic weapons. He said that was okay, that we'd be working with enlarged fire teams and that they'd surely give us the opportunity to experiment.

He knows something that I don't.

* * *

1. "Just look around and find out where the back door is."  
"I already looked, and there ain't one."  
"Reckon where do you think they want one?"  
-Wendy Bagwell and the Sunlighters, Here Come the Rattlesnakes

In all fairness, I live in one of the supposed heartlands of the snake handling movement, and all the Pentecostals I know consider it an unbiblical practice.

Point: "They shall take up serpents"- 1611 King James Bible

Counterpoint: "And shall take away serpents"-1599 Geneva Bible

See also: Luke 4:9-12

My grandfather was a High School Math and Sunday School teacher who kept (non-venomous) King Snakes for pets and to get rid of rats around his feed bins. Sometimes he would keep them in glass cages on his desk, which I suppose went a long ways to making sure all eyes were to the front of the class..


	8. Chapter 6: Island Hideaway

"In the Cain-and-Abel conflicts of the 21st century, ruthlessness trumps technology."  
- Ralph Peters

* * *

***interlude***  
**Selayar Island, Indonesia**  
**20 January, 2011**

The sun had yet to rise when Colonel Subandi Adi Sutjipto, lately of Kodam (Military Area Command) VII/Wirabuana, stepped off the fishing boat and on to the island that was his new area of operations. Having been reassigned from Borneo to Sulawesi and Sulawesi to Selayar, his orders were to maximize, as quickly as possible, the island's agricultural output, with a long-term goal of providing agricultural and light industrial support for the Indonesian war effort elsewhere, in particular the nearest battle zones in Makassar and Denpasar.

First he'd have to work on feeding the local citizens. The pre-invasion population of 120,000 was now at some 180,000 and still climbing, while his own combat engineer battalion was down to company strength and losing men daily.

One of the most densely-populated countries in the world, Indonesia had seen its fair share of landings: four in Sumatra and five in Java, plus one over Batam, Denpasar and Makassar each. Indonesia had done surprisingly well in the early days, wisely choosing to disperse the bulk their military while leaving the issue of public order to the police. They also ramped up their preexisting transmigration programs, leading to a more orderly, if less peaceful, exodus of civilians from threatened cities than was seen in most parts of the world. At the end, over an eighth of the population in threatened cities had been moved to outlying or less-threatened areas.

Things only started falling apart after the shooting. There had been a few glimmers of hope: relatively little of the Indonesian landmass had actually been attacked, for one thing. Rumour had it that Singapore had actually eradicated the enemy presence in their city/country as well as in Batam, and that a combined Singaporean, Malaysian, Bruneian and Indonesian force was making its way up the peninsula (in the opposite direction of Sutjipto and his new home—figures).

But for the most part, the January counter-attacks seemed to be every bit as disastrous here as they were everywhere else in the world. The effects to Indonesian morale were probably worse. The swamps, jungles, and mountains of Indonesia were pretty good places for guerrilla actions, and many commanders told their troops that they would "fight, get beaten, rise, and fight again," to quote some American general.

Some believed it, seeing their fight as similar to the Indonesian National Revolution. Others saw it having more in common with the Dutch defense against the Japanese, the Sultans against the Portuguese and Dutch, or even (possibly) Homo Erectus and Homo Floresiensis against Homo Sapiens. "Well, we tried, but home team loses again. Time to go home." was a common sentiment among those who still had homes to go to.

This was especially true for those with homes to the east of the country. The West Papuans had declared their independence, as had the Mollucans. They had not always treated transmigrated Javanese and Sumatrans kindly and many feared them even more than they feared the aliens. There were Islamist militants on the rise as well, dedicated to purifying their land of the infidel crusader, but these were far more concerned with infidels from the stars than any of the human variety. Out of Bali had emerged, of all things, a Hindu, Falung Gong, and Odinist/Heavy Metal-inspired cult intent on helping the agents of Surtr bring about the Last Havoc by killing adult humans and offering their children as sacrifices.

It was hard to know what exactly was going on elsewhere in the world, what with radio communications a thing of the past and news seldom traveling faster than a sail-powered pinisi, but they weren't entirely cut off from civilization. An Australian submarine had spent half a week on Selayar, with a Major from something called an Independent Company[1] asking questions, giving advice and making trades: guns and other equipment for warm bodies. If international trade was ever restored, Sutjipto suspected that that would be a common exchange.

So, some went home, some went back to the jungles of Borneo, some faded into the mountains and swamps of Sulawesi, some sailed to one of any thousand small unmolested islands, and some stayed behind to keep their country together, and maybe venture forth to annoy the invaders every now and then.

* * *

**Tallo River mouth  
Makassar, Indonesia**  
**February 2nd, 2011**

Sunrise on the river brought a crescendo of noise from the birds and other creatures that inhabited it; quite indifferent to the fact that the old masters of the half-sunken hulks and forlorn stilted huts they were living in had disappeared, transplanted by a new dominant species.

A lot of weird things had happened in the last few weeks. The nation had settled into a new state of affairs, odd though it was, and with no threats to their own national borders the Mollucans and Papuans were beginning to offer aid to Kodam VII. Sutjipto wasn't sure how to feel about that; he half expected any force sent from Ambon to come intending to finish what the invaders started, but if they did come as allies, it would certainly take the strain off his forces…

"Ain't scared, are you?" asked "The Yellowjacket", so named in honor of his alma mater.

"Why would I be scared?" asked Colonel Sutjipto, pulling himself from his contemplations.

"Because we're in a nitrocellulose-laden boat that a well-placed crossbow bolt could sink, and we're going to be going up river in even smaller boats to plant our explosives in kissing distance of spacemen and hope we can get out of nuking distance before the timers on the launchers goes off."

"What's wrong? Do you distrust the integrity of your devises."

"Not my devises, just your transport."

"Insh'allah" said the major with a shrug.  
"Well, if you don't trust them, then why were you so eager to come?" thought the major with a frown. Westerners could be so reckless sometimes.

Then again, the "rambling wreckers" had worked well enough. A truckload of weather balloons had been discovered by his troops along with hydrogen an helium gas to inflate them, and someone had suggested using them to loft explosives. Yellowjacket had done the number-crunching to make a decent bang for their buck and managed to put some pretty impressive scorchmarks on the bottoms of the alien transport ship. Such antics usually resulted in a nuking of the nearest large human cluster, but in the spread-out, watery maze that made up the Makassar there really wasn't a lot to target, and in any event Indonesian commanders often showed less concern for punitive actions than some.

The new devises—Yellowjacket had been overruled in his wish to call them Sake Bombs— were simple alcohol-fueled rockets that would be fired from disposable launchers: essentially primitive versions of the locally produced NDL-40 multi-rocket launch system. They were aimed at where the Hasanuddin University Campus used to stand and elevated to smash into the craft floating directly above it. Beefed up security meant they'd have to keep their distance. It would prove a somewhat harder target than it had been with the balloons, but as long as the rocket went in the general direction of "up" they had a pretty good chance of hitting the behemoth. Not like it could take evasive action or anything.

"Blue- and green-water naval activity usually favours the most technologically advanced power." mused the Colonel as they came ashore on a riverine islet that would serve as their artillery park. "And yet here we are traveling with relative east from one island to another. It's strange how they completely ignore sailing ships and smaller motorcraft."

"Makes me wonder if they're just lulling us into a false since of security."

"Speaking of which, look, is that ship moving?"

"I hope not, it's going to completely ruin my calculations if they change position."

"It'll ruin more than that if they're coming after us!"

The would-be rocketeers left their rockets where they were and made for the nearest tree cover, watching as the ship which had hung over Makassar for over three months rose up and slowly faded from view like an escaped balloon. For a good half hour they stood on the bank, unable to speak or look away, lest the illusion disappear. Was Earth being abandoned, or just Makassar? Had they given up, or decided to cut their losses and nuke us from orbit?

Finally, Yellowjacket hazarded a glance at his unused contraptions.

"Well, what are we going to do with those now?" asked Yellojacket.

"Insh'allah" said the major with a shrug.

* * *

1. Staybehind/commando forces from World War II that carried out operations against Japanese in occupied territories. Much of their history is still classified by the Australian government, just in case they're ever needed again.


	9. Chapter 7: Over the Top

or, **Infiltration II**

_'Tis old Stonewall the Rebel that leans on his sword,_  
_And while we are mounting prays low to the Lord:_  
_"Now each cavalier that loves honor and right,_  
_Let him follow the feather of Stuart tonight."_

_Come tighten your girth and slacken your rein;_  
_Come buckle your blanket and holster again;_  
_Try the click of your trigger and balance your blade,_  
_For he must ride sure that goes riding a raid._  
-Riding a Raid

* * *

***Diary Entry: Wednesday morning, May 4th 2011***

The captain had us running around like mad these past few days making sure our units are in top shape. Looks like my concerns were right: we're going to invade Fulton County.

We have up to 80 combat-effective troops and enough walking wounded to put two combat platoons together. We've got two new companies here with us, one's a cavalry squadron from Gordon County and the other's a company of special shock troops. The latter is particularly interesting, as it seems like they got their start

_"You are a very fast writer"…_

* * *

***interlude***  
**Plant McDonough**  
**Near Smyrna, Georgia**  
**4 May, 2011**

…said Major Robert Williams Clifton, 37th Assault Company, looking over Sarah's shoulder.

"Thank you." she said, smiling at the interloper as she snapped her book closed. "Former engineering student. Goes with the territory."

"Ah, engineer. That explains things." he said, making squiggly lines in the air. "For a moment I thought your were writing in code."

"Can I help you, Major?"

"You led the latest recce across the Chatt? Also handpicked to work with my unit? I want you to brief my officers later."

"Well, I wasn't handpi…"

"You'll be there then? Good. Pleasure working with you, Sergeant Ta…gliab…"

"Tag will do. French."

"French? Sounds Italian."

* * *

**Center Hill Neighbourhood**  
**Atlanta, Georgia**  
**2 May, 2011**

Robert Clifton took a position behind the steeple and debris from the front facade of Berean Seventh-Day Adventist Church, now laying in the foyer of Radcliff Presbytyrian Church on the opposite side of Hamilton E Holmes Drive. The elevated position provided decent cover from the warriors and drones coming up from Fredrick Douglas High School, but wasn't so conspicuous as to make him a target to enemy air power.

He leaned around his cover long enough to fire off a magazine at the enemy, delivering well-aimed bursts into faces and legs. Another gunner, firing a Negev light machinegun, sprayed at them a little more wildly. He could afford it, with his newfangled technology and all.

Heavy snipers and rifle-grenadiers positioned on the roof of the Adventist Book Center—Clifton had denied their request to use the remaining books as sandbags—and on the ramparts of a third shattered church took down drones as they attempted to blow away the infantry. Heavy machinegun batteries warded off and even shot down one striker that tried to bomb the snipers. Warriors rushed forward again in hopes of overrunning the humans and their machineguns, but the infantry perforated them as they tried to cross the open ground. This deadly game of rock-paper-scissors would probably drag on until everyone on one side was out of bullets or dead; Clifton just loaded another magazine into his BAR and kept firing.

Stopping a warrior charge was like stopping an avalanche with fire hoses: you cold do it, but it took a lot of hoses. Some would argue that Clifton's old Browning Automatic Rifle wasn't the best hose for the job: the weapon was too heavy for a shoulder-arm and too light for a light machine gun, no quick-change barrel, and magazine capacity was limited.

Clifton, like many BAR gunners before him, would have disagreed.[1] As a shoulder-arm, it's weight and controllability didn't matter so much to the 6'4" former high school linebacker. As for the other shortcomings, the important thing to remember about the Browning Automatic Rifle was the need to use it as an automatic rifle. That meant controlled bursts and fire discipline, so you didn't run out of ammunition or overheat the barrel.

One of the men to his right took a round center mass and fell to the ground, bleeding but still wiggling. A medic leapt to his position to see if he could be saved. Their new military-grade body armour was certainly proving worth its weight. Another one, part of the church militia, took a round in the eye and went down; armour probably not helpful there.

"NO! Hey keep your heads down, people! Fire around cover, not over it!" yelled Pastor Jones, slamming a magazine into his Mini-14 and firing back at them.

"Clifton, how long are we staying here?" screamed Captain Mabel "Madea" Simmons

"Not much longer." he said, eyeing his bayonet and eager to show the enemy what it was like to receive a charge for a change.

The warriors made one more big push that morning. As it too receded, they were surprised to see the humans arise from their positions and chase them back down the street. Armoured trucks took to the road to lend their firepower, it's multiple gun platforms cutting swaths through warrior and drone alike.

* * *

**Center Hill Neighbourhood**  
**Atlanta, Georgia**  
**3 May, 2011**

By midnight that night, they had pushed to the campus of Douglass High School, fighting hand-to-hand the whole way. Some strikers had gotten through the air defense and inflicted casualties, but their command was still mostly intact. They'd probably be pushed out again by morning or afternoon, but such was the give-and-take of these battles. For the moment, however, the front lines were relatively quiet.

"It's a shame about Pastor Jones taking a round." said Clifton, as he and his staff made their rounds near the defenses overlooking the school's football field. "The man probably did as much as anyone to keep this community alive, then he gave us all the help he could and didn't hesitate to lead his flock into battle when it came down to it. Better than a lot of them; I sure hope they can save his leg."

"Uhher. Good thing the Bible say eye for eye and not foot for foot. We'd really be in trouble."

"Might want to re-read your Bible, Lieutenant. In any event, where were you last Saturday? Thought you said you'd go by the church."

"And that's what I did. I went BY the church."

"I didn't see you there."

"I did. I said I would go BY the church I just passed BY it. Hallelujer. Saint Phillip and them. Hail Mary full of Grace and all you people God bless ya all you little Catholic people hail Lordy."

"…"

"Every time I try to read the Bible... and Jesus... and all them words in red... I open my Bible to that New Testimony and see all that red and I just give up. Jesus was talkin' way too much."

"Lieutenant, do me a favour and don't you blaspheme while you're near me. Don't care if you do it when I ain't around, but I don't want to be collateral damage."

"Didn't you once say that you didn't believe in God?"

"I… never said that. I just said I found it unlikely that God would involve himself in humanity's business. Still have my doubts on it, to be honest. Then again… I also didn't think aliens would either, before they started shooting at us. Hey, gotta hope someone up there's on our side, right?"

"Major Clifton! New orders from Regiment!" yelled a courier, trotting ahead of a new wave of reinforcements. Clifton cut short the theological discussion long enough to accept the envelope.

"Thank you, private."

The need for runners, couriers and telegraph/field telephone operators had forced quite a few changes in militia organization; most strategic planners since 1935 had taken wireless communication of some form as a given.

"Hmm, 'Go to Plant McDonough. Head north on 280 and turn east at the river. Look for smokestack… unless it collapsed?'"

Directions were never as easy as given on paper. Traffic wasn't quite the issue it used to be, but with all the clutter and damage to the streets even their off-road vehicles had to make frequent detours. The bridges were gone, of course; they'd probably have to go several miles downstream and ferry across.

* * *

***Diary Entry: Wednesday morning, May 4th 2011***

on both sides of the Atlanta gang wars. They also recruit from a couple of extended families. Not too different from our setup really (where do you think our pharmacists and bomb-makers got their chemistry skills?). Who would have thought that our city's rising crime problem would have eventually become an advantage?

Their leader seems to be competent. They're better armored than us, their weapon loadouts are about as good, and from what I've heard they seem to know how to use them. We're going to find out soon enough.

* * *

1. The BAR seems to have been one of those guns hated in its time by everyone except the soldiers that used them, much like its contemporary, the M-1 Carbine.

I've always felt that the best review of any weapon comes from the people it was used against, and what did America's enemies say about the BARs and M-1 Carbines? The Nazis and Viet Cong both seemed eager to procure them and were quite happy to use them against their former owners. Yeah, they used everything they could get their hands on, but the Nazis at least usually looked down on captured equipment and passed them off to their foreign legions. Not so in this case.

I had considered letting Clifton's gunsmith do some Frankensteining on his gun: extended 40-round magazines, addition of a Belgian/Swedish-style pistol grip and quick-change barrel, improved bipod and flash suppressor…

…then I realized I was essentially trying to turn his BAR into a BREN. Fine weapon in its own right, but wouldn't but wouldn't it be better to let real light machine guns serve in their own roles?


	10. Chapter 8: Refugees

_Now gallop, now gallop to swim or to ford!_  
_Old Stonewall, still watching, prays low to the Lord:_  
_"Goodbye, dear old Rebel! The river's not wide,_  
_And Maryland's lights in her window to guide." _

_Come tighten your girth and slacken your rein;_  
_Come buckle your blanket and holster again;_  
_Try the click of your trigger and balance your blade,_  
_For he must ride sure that goes riding a raid._  
-Riding a Raid

* * *

***interlude***  
**3 May, 2011**  
**Plant McDonough**  
**Near Smyrna, Georgia**

Clifton reigned in the snorting and whinnying Arabian chestnut and wondered if he'd ever get used to horses. Assault Companies usually traveled by truck, four-wheeler, or on foot, but sometimes horses and mules were deemed more suitable and the Chattahoochee Offensive was one of those times. All officers and heavy weapons crews were expected to have rudimentary horsemanship skills, and "rudimentary" certainly applied to him.

"Don't think that's what they meant by riding in a circle on 285." called out Corporal Jed Watkins, one of the riders from the Atmarga Column. One of their troops had been attached to his company to help with transport, as well as recon and sniper support.

"All for the best, cause this ride don't smell anything at all like a pound of purple."

Fortified by junked cars, construction equipment, sandboxes, earth/debris berms, jersey barriers, tires, and chain-linked fences reworked to function as abatis, the former coal and natural gas plant was pretty typical of post-apocalyptic fortifications. It looked especially ominous in the waning sunlight, though Clifton wasn't even fazed anymore by the big Confederate Battle Flag catching the last beams of light from the remnants of the smokestack. As for the troops holding it, they had clearly done a lot to make themselves look presentable.

He had once heard that no combat-ready unit passes inspection, and that no inspection-ready unit passes combat. It may have been true, but it was also a good rule not to have a unit on your flank that fully lets itself go.

He got up early the next day and attended a reconnaissance report by one of C Company's scouts; an erratic, somewhat-jittery young woman who had probably once been a college overachiever. He couldn't hold it against her; emotionally-balanced people were rare these days. Most sat on the fringes of the spectrum between wiry, amped-up robots and somnolent, dead-eyed zombies.

He later saw Sarah crawled off into a dark corner, furiously jotting comments into her diary with one hand and flipping the pages of a book with the other: "German Strategy and the Path to Verdun" by Robert Foley.

"Verdun? Philippe Petain? They shall not pass?" asked Clifton.[1]

"Indeed. Is there anything else I can help you with, Major?" asked Tag, absently.

"You and your team are ready to go? Well then, not really."

"Ok, good. Well, leave me alone so I can finish my book."

"You plan on finishing that in half an hour?" he asked. She was only halfway through and it had at least 300 pages.

"Mmhmm."

Yup, thought Clifton, overachiever if there ever was one.

* * *

***Diary Entry: Wednesday Afternoon, May 4th 2011***

Three years ago, my family spent almost a year drifting through Europe. Mom had been planning on it for years but wanted us to be old enough to enjoy it, and wanted Bush to be out of office so that she didn't have to pretend to be Canadian. I take after Dad so that was never a problem for me. Vive le Quebec libre!

Anyway, Plant McDonough reminds me of some of the ruined castles that we visited and sometimes slept in: bare stone floors and ceilings, shattered and haphazardly repaired stairways, lots of dungeon-like coal pits and furnace rooms, tarps or open sky where roofs should be. It's not a perfect match, but the feelings of abandonment and decay are definitely here, as is the feeling of time-tested sturdiness.

On one hand I'm eager to get out of its dank confines, but on the other hand I'm going to miss having so much reinforced concrete between myself and the rest of the world.

The Chattahoochee Offensive strikes me as borrowing from the strategies of Thomas J. Jackson and Erich von Falkenhayn: rather than try keep the spiders away from areas where civilians are still living, we intend to seek them out and destroy them.

I've heard a lot of complaints from people saying that our job should be to preserve humanity, not run around hunting spiders. I say that we should give it a shot: containment clearly don't work and it seems that hunting spiders would do plenty to preserve humanity, assuming we hunt enough of them. I do agree that we need to avoid casualties, at least until we're sure that they have fewer reserves to draw on than we do.

I'll say one thing about our overall commander, Major Robert Clifton: he's just a bad enough horseman to pull an adequate Stonewall Jackson impersonation. Wonder if he's related to my friend Denise from the Divisional Hospital? It's a small war, after all.

* * *

***interlude***  
**5 May, 2011**  
**Riverside Neighbourhood**  
**Atlanta, Georgia**

"April showers bring May flowers. April showers bring May flowers." prattled Sarah, scooping up a flower and putting it behind her ear.

Her squad had taken up temporary residence in the kitchen and living room of what had probably once been a pretty little house, with the building and surrounding yardspace having been immaculately tended by some little old lady. The roof and two walls were gone; fallen in on themselves or strewn across the yard amongst the weeds that were slowly taking over, but nearby trees offered shade and it seemed like a pretty decent staging area should the current weather hold.

"You seem to be awful cheery this morning, Lobster Girl." said Sergeant Skitter "Been by the nurse's office for your medicine yet?"

"See someone acting like that, you know she either need to get off her meds or get on them" said Captain Madea Simmons, taking a kettle off the still-usable wood stove.

"All this lye soap is murdering my hair. Need to get it trimmed again soon. Pressed too, if possible. Just because the world ended doesn't mean I can't look pretty!"

Sarah started humming Wildwood Flower. Madea raised an eyebrow.

"Ok… Sergeant Skitter, that one sure enough need to have less crank in her coffee."

"Aw, don't worry about her, she'll be back to her gloomy self as soon as it gets a little warmer."

* * *

***Diary Entry: Thursday Morning, May 5th 2011***

10th and 12th Regiment plus the attached units went across the river at sundown and immediately ran into opposition. We fought all night and by dawn we had fought our way to Bolton road. It's been pretty easy so far, swatting "scout teams" of one or two spiders and robots each, but we've been warned that a pretty massive force is on its way, so we'll have to see if we really can deal with them.

Captain Madea Simmons briefly visited for breakfast (which was quite nice: unusually good tea plus what I think was squirrel jerky—rat usually has a more plastic taste) and explained our goals: 12th Regiment will eradicate spider forces in Riverside and Bolton, then pave the way for further advances into Hills Park. 10th is going to do likewise in Lincoln Homes, Scotts Crossing and Carver Hills. If it goes good they'll be a similar advance by regiments in the north and west.

Awful lot seems to be depending on us right now. We're going to have quite the labor windfall in the coming days and I'm not sure when I can write again.

At least the weather's been good. There was quite a downpour Tuesday night, but that's all we've had in a week and it hasn't been too hot or humid either.

* * *

***Diary Entry: Sunday Afternoon, May 8th 2011***  
1st Platoon, to which I am now assigned, really went out of its way in taking the fight to the enemy. All the way out to the weirdly-named neighborhood of West Peachtree Battle, where we did to incoming forces what Hood had wanted to do to the Army of the Cumberland in 1865.[1]

They crowded onto the bridge at Moores Mill Road, as if ambush wasn't a concern for them, and we punished their complacency by dropping it into Peachtree Creek. We landed several volleys of rifle-grenades on survivors in the creek and on the far bank, while our snipers and machine-gun teams dispatched many of those that tried to flee. A flight of two bombers came in at us, but both were shot down without trouble.

Rifle-grenades, when used in an indirect fire role, really skirt the line on their "small arms only or you get nuked" rule, so we tend to use them sparingly. Use them en-masse every now and then, however, and they can have a very gratifying effect.

That was on Friday. We killed no less than thirty spiders and half as many robots, and of course our mood was pretty jubilant. It was on the way home that we ran into problems.

I heard stories of feral refugees still hiding from the spiders in these neighborhoods, but wasn't sure if it was true until today. I hadn't seen any since before the Battle of Inman Yard and figured most had been dragooned to work as soldiers or plowmen. Apparently not.

A group of about twenty survivors emerged from a nearby antique store. They'd been hiding there for days: half-starved, weak and helpless.

I can't for the life of me see why they hadn't taken up arms or tried to get out of the city yet. Most of them were able-bodied, and those had to be a better choices than just lying down and dying in that dark, fetid store.

Skitter was even meaner about it than I. He wanted to just point these "yuppies" towards relative safety and bid them adieu. Lieutenant Tobin, our Company XO, overruled him and ordered two of our squads to take the refugees back to Plant McDonough.

Skitter shrugged, coaxed them into line, provided stretchers as needed, and told them to move out. He did threaten to bayonet anyone who fell out of line, and by the time we got back any one of us would have.

Things went well enough for a few blocks. Then it was a grocery store that caused the problem. All those days hiding from the aliens, none of them had eaten. They were starved. One of the women broke away and tried to get through the door. I tried explaining that the place might be booby-trapped, but she would have none of it. She and several others rushed by me.

Some people would have done more to try and stop them. I would have, not too long ago. What did I do yesterday?

I dove away from the store, planted my face in the ground and covered my ears.

The blast killed seven of them and wounded ten. I know it would have been a lot less casualties if someone had done her job and tried harder to keep them away from that door. I should probably feel terrible right now, but all I really feel is rage at the fact that those idiots got themselves blown up when we might have been able to recover the explosives for our own uses.

What's happening to me?

* * *

Footnotes:  
1. Both Clifton and Sarah made small historical mistakes. "They shall not pass" wasn't spoken by Petian and the Battle of Peachtree Creek wasn't orchestrated by Hood. Both were the work of their respective predecessors. Causing confusion for future generations in one of many problems that may result from changing strategic horses midstream.

This chapter, of course, is an homage to the prequel comics, in particular Weaver's ambush of a skitter column and the death of one of his soldiers. It's partially an examination of how a… less sentimental group of people might have handled that type of event.


	11. Chapter 9: Dixie Alley

_"I see it come across the plains the hail begins to fall_  
_One more twister through the fields is the ruin of us all._  
_The lightning starts to flashing and the wind begins to roar_  
_I see the trees bend double then I don't see them no more._

_Nowhere to go nowhere to hide_  
_In the place where the earth and the sky collide_  
_Nowhere to run you don't stand a chance_  
_When the clouds come down and do the Devil's Dance"_  
-Mountain Heart, Twister

* * *

***interlude***  
**27 April, 2011**  
**Hueytown, Alabama**

It started as a normal enough day: muggy and hot, with a moderate overcast to offer some reprieve from the scorching sun. Sometimes the clouds would drop rain and lightning on the ground below for a few minutes, but that never really helped anything. With the sky greying and a mass of clouds forming and rising into the low stratosphere, it looked like another thunderstorm was coming.

Then the grey sky turned black and the clouds went into an ugly swirl. Animals started going crazy. The wind died down. Rain and then hail began falling. The rumble of thunder was drowned out by the growing roar of the renewed tempest. Those who recognized the signs dove for cover as the funnel came down on Birmingham.

The sound had been worse than any barrage of Mech rockets, the devastation rivaled that of a nuclear bomb. Corporal Michael Weaver, formally of Huntsville, Alabama, made his way down what he assumed had once been Tin Mill Road, towards the sprawling Fairfield Works and Tubular Operations which the Alabama Militia had been holding against repeated enemy attacks. The still-falling hailstones seemed like they were big enough to kill him, the still-falling debris actually were big enough to kill him. The rear flank downdraft of the receding storm made it hard to stand, let alone run.

He had been through a few tornadoes before, but nothing compared to this. Before long, the winds died down and there was no sound at all, not even the once-familiar wail of sirens and ambulances.

Among the significant early memories of every Southerner, the good ones usually involve a fishing trip with Dad or Grandpa, and the bad ones usually involve the freight-train roar of a passing tornado as it levels one's home town. In the last 20 minutes, Michael had seen things that rivaled any of his experiences in the last five months of the war. He had seen the blinds in shattered windows intricately twisted and looped into each other in what might have once made for an excellent modern art exhibit, a hundred year-old oak tree twisted like a corkscrew and yanked from the ground like a common weed, houses and 18-wheelers picked up and sent flying through the air, a concrete building that had survived a direct hit from alien rockets fold in on itself like a stack of cards when the funnel pushed it down, remaining trees festooned with yellow insulation and aluminum siding, and even a few corpses.

He had seen a fellow teenager, pinned through the chest to a cinderblock wall by a wooden stake, still alive (for the time being) as his comrades tried to cut him free. He had heard tell of a rare "sideways twister" that briefly dipped into a lake, picked up the water and dropped a wall of it onto a chicken farm, crushing and drowning many of the birds.[1]

The steel works were more or less gone, and the dazed soldiers on what had been the front lines would be in a great deal of trouble if the Skitters they had been fighting were to launch an immediate attack. But it seemed that the Skitters were likewise gone.

Well, not gone, just scattered in varying states of intactness across most of Jefferson and Blout Counties.

* * *

**3 May, 2011**  
**2nd Regimental Field Hospital**  
**Midfield, Alabama**

In many ways, the little insurgent MASH unit wasn't that different from what they had back in Smyrna: another abandoned shopping centre, another parking lot filled with green and brown canvas tents, with pavement stained blackish-red by the blood of thousands of patients.

"Did you know that Patient Stake-in-Chest has been given a good prognosis for recovery?" asked Ben Matlock.

"Really?" responded Denise Clifton, more than a little surprised.

"Yup. Apparently, the bumpy wagon ride saved his life. First responders didn't realize that his airway was obstructed; having the stake come out meant that he could breath through the hole in his trachea. If that hadn't happened, his surgeon says he would have probably suffocated…"

"Unintentional tracheotomy? Interesting."

"Did you know that neither Birmingham nor Atlanta were built on rivers?"

"Um, I did not." she answered, unsure where that one came from.

"Yup. They both started out as rail towns; Atlanta didn't reach the Chattahoochee until the 20th century."

"Makes sense. They were both largely industrial cities at one time, and about the same size fifty years ago. Both are relatively high: about a hundred miles above the Fall Line, so rivers wouldn't do them much good in any event."

On one hand, that meant that keeping survivors hydrated had been a bit of a problem in this unusually hot summer. On the other hand, it meant that they didn't suffer quite as many filth diseases as the lower, wetter cities. West Nile virus, endemic typhus and typhoid fever were bad enough and she was quite glad that she didn't have to deal with such dreaded illnesses as malaria or yellow fever, both making a comeback along the coasts.

Denise wasn't entirely sure if it was a great idea sending pretty much every pathogenic ward in Atlanta off to work in the trauma wards of Birmingham when they had been dealing with all three of the aforementioned diseases. But the Alabamans needed help digging themselves out of the rubble, and had promised to send help to surrounding states once that task was done. She'd just have to hope that the individual companies could handle their own infirmities until they got back.

"How many do you think died?" asked Ben.

"From just the tornado? Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands? Fewer because they were already on war footing and on the lookout for these kinds of threats? More because many of them had inadequate warning and shelter? I have no idea, and we won't know for sure until we've done some more clearing."

Denise walked to a shelf in the back of the tent and took down some medical supplies. The two of them went to work sorting and inventorying them for the next shift.

"A lot more are going to die in the coming days." she said "Heat stroke is taking its toll, and there seems to be some new fungal infections that we're having a lot of trouble dealing with."

"Well, at least the warriors and drones are gone: word is that their ships were picking up whatever they could find within an hour of the twisters passing, then tore out of here never to be seen again."

The Alabama Militia had taken a number of enemy corpses, intact harnessed kids, and even a few live specimens. Ben would have loved to study the new acquisitions in depth, but it seemed like the weird men from Atlanta who made off with such things had followed them to Birmingham.

"Seems like maybe they're gone for good."

"Hope they let us keep the city, and don't just wind up nuking us."

"Why would they do that? How much more damage could they hope to cause?"

Good point. Very little in Birmingham seemed worth a nuclear attack: the human structures looked like a giant had made a one-mile long, sixty-mile wide stain of them; the big alien structure looked like a giant had ripped off one wing and used it pulverize the rest—and that's pretty near exactly what had happened.

* * *

Footnotes:  
1. Lots of folks have trouble believing some of the things that tornadoes are capable of. Everything mentioned here is based on actual accounts from tornado survivors, and some of them I have witnessed personally.

I had to alter the tornado track just a bit to have it score a direct hit of the Espheni's Birmingham base, which I put on top of Legion's Field. In our timeline the damage occurred mostly in the northwest suburbs of the city.

Random theory: it wasn't an alien nuke that did all that damage to Charleston SC, it was a repeat of the 1886 earthquake (that somehow didn't cave in the underground mall).


	12. Chapter 10: Back to Work

_"Look, we all have our breaking point. Personally, mine is at 2:00, 4:00 and 6:00 every day. It's a condition known in medical terms as "yellow belly". I survive by keeping a standing reservation at the latrine and screaming into my pillow every night. Of course, that's not everybody's style."_  
-Hawkeye Pierce

* * *

***Diary Entry: Monday Afternoon, May 9th 2011***  
We're all still pretty shaken up about what happened yesterday, or at least I am (Skitter says disasters do wonders for natural selection… he really can be a jerk sometimes), and it looks like I'm getting sick again. Stomach pains and nausea are back, my ears are still ringing from the blast, I'm having trouble staying balanced, short-term memory is iffy and I'm suffering slight pain in my neck. They're going to keep me here at Plant McDonough for the night just to make sure it isn't anything more serious than good old-fashioned shell-shock.

Oh, it isn't all physical, but then again it never is. I became reasonably familiar with all the clinical terms that might apply to me during and after my Giardia-induced hiatus: depersonalization, derealization, survivor's guilt, combat stress reaction, brief-reactive psychosis, post-traumatic stress disorder, et al. I guess I hoped that knowing about them would prevent me from experiencing them again. Nope, instead of just a wreck, I'm a self-aware wreck.

Pastor Byrne came and spoke to me for awhile, gave me the closest thing I'm likely to get to therapy. He says my squad is eager to have me back, and those civilians who know of my condition wished me a quick recovery. We spoke at length on a number of topics, nothing I didn't expect to hear but I was still glad to hear it.

I haven't been able to sleep, so I used the free time to collect some of the notes I've been taking on the combat in Northwest Atlanta. I'm going to be going back in my diary and maybe work with others to get a coherent history of what we're going through. Captain Hall likes the idea, and even wants to scrounge up some old Polaroids and commission some Combat Cameramen for the benefit of future generations. Hopeful thought, that there will be future generations.

***Diary Entry: Tuesday Afternoon, May 10th 2011***  
90 degrees today! Up from 87 yesterday. They tell us to stay in shade and drink plenty of water. Seems that we and the spiders have both agreed to limit mid-day activity, which does at least give me more time to write.

In international news: the City of Birmingham was completely destroyed last month. Not by spiders as one might expect, but by a series of tornadoes which they say would have been bad even before the NWS went off the air. I was talking to a member of the 37th Assault Company and he says that, at one point, West Atlanta's forces were down to two-thirds strength from all the units being pulled off the line to help dig Alabamans out of the rubble. I guess there's some consolation in the fact that an alien tower was also destroyed and enemy forces in Birmingham were completely annihilated.[1]

I'm a little surprised that I didn't hear about it till now, but it's hard enough knowing what's going on in your own city these days. Human life could go extinct outside of Georgia and it could easi…

[…ly be weeks before I found out. Sorry, had to dive for cover mid-sentence.]

I'm writing this from underneath one of the sandbag cubicles that serve as our bomb shelters. Been here for half an hour. Orders are to sit tight and don't make targets of ourselves.

So much for avoiding mid-day activity. Seems that a number of 'bots and spiders have pushed through our lines, climbed to the top of the Bolton Road Dump and are now laying down long-range rocket fire on Plant McDonough. Not the best of shots: no fatalities even though our smokestack just got a few stories shorter, but it is quite a problem and my guess is we're going to scratch up a taskforce to storm Trash Mountain.

***Diary Entry: Saturday Evening, May 14th 2011***  
I hated the landfill from the moment I first had to look at it. It sits right between us and downtown Atlanta and really ruins our view of the skyline. But now that I'm sitting on top of it, I'm reminded that there's really not much skyline left to view. It's especially creepy looking to the southeast after nightfall and seeing only darkness.

Our latest assault went well enough, considering what little time we had to prepare for it. HQ is secure once again and the enemy forces have withdrawn to the water treatment plant, which we'll hit in force at midnight.

Riverside is completely under our control, as is about two-thirds of Bolton. The assault and cavalry companies are working on driving them down Marietta Road and Marietta Boulevard respectively, and if successful I think we can declare both neighborhoods liberated.

I'm back with my fireteam again, and I'm glad to see how well they've handled themselves in my absence. We've had four more casualties in the last few days, but the increased size of our teams plus a surprisingly adept recruitment and reinforcement effort on the part of Regiment is really helping to overcome our combat losses. Logistical support from high command is running at a level unseen in the past few months, despite interdiction attempts on the part of our enemy. It's way too good to last of course, and bears all the hallmarks of an Ardennes Offensive/Early's Raid-style last gasp effort, but it is nice while it lasts.

***Diary Entry: Tuesday Afternoon, May 17th 2011***  
The weather is a lot more pleasant than it had been. Down to the 70's and 60's and a thick overcast for the last few days, but very little rain.

We hit the plant early Sunday morning and had full control of it by dawn. We're fortifying for an expected counterattack, and if I have to say anything it's that my time in this sewage plant will cause me to never again complain about having to sleep in a coal plant.

Atlanta is infamous for its watershed pollution problems, and the R. M. Clayton Water Reclamation Center has been one of the worst offenders since its construction in the 1930's, when heavy urban sprawl first reached the river.

Our country really mistreated it's waterways before the 1980's (remembered by my Chicago-born mom as the time when rivers routinely burst into flames), and there was still a lot of work to be done. The state's sewage treatment and chicken rendering plants used to dump tons of untreated refuse right into the same water that people drank and swam in. Some of the older residents say record-breaking catfish and gar used to be caught around the plants back then, but would you really want to eat them?[2]

Actually, I could really go for a big roasted longnose gar. When this battle is over we should try to get our company reassigned for a fishing expedition.

***Diary Entry: Wednesday Morning, May 18th 2011***  
The spiders came at us like a hurricane last night: three waves from three directions and a fourth wave from all directions. They overran about half the plant and disaster was only averted by the timely arrival of D Company and a detachment from the Atmarga Column.

They expect us to return the favor. While most of C company is being pressed into labor work on the pontoon bridges and barricades, they've asked our best horsemen to accompany them to the far side of Crestlawn Cemetery for a series of raids and spoiling attacks. We're going to do the usual, plus lay out a few tripwires to give follow-on forces something to think about. This is a fairly long-term operation and it'll be a while before I can write again.

***Diary Entry: Wednesday Night, May 25th 2011***  
Still limping a bit from where one of the horses threw me (and then peed on me). Wish I could say it was the worst experience this week.

We were caught up in a big Pepsi bottling plant and they stormed it, forcing us to scatter. Had to fight my way out and into the woods of Crestlawn Cemetery, where I galloped back to our lines on Casey's Hill. Others fled north into the residential areas, while a few more may still be in the surrounding industrial park

Crestlawn is still a beautiful place despite all that happened. Normally I would enjoy visiting an area that still bears graves and artillery revetments from the First Battle of Atlanta, but right now we spend more time digging graves than reading off of them. And I think we're losing more to heatstroke than enemy action. It's 9 o'clock right now and still at least 85 degrees.

There is some good news, though. Spink-Collins Park and Bolton Academy were both captured this afternoon and it looks like enemy forces will be driven south of Carroll Drive before sunrise. We'll be moving to occupy the rest of the cemetery and Hills Park tomorrow, and word has it that the long awaited offensive from the west will come tomorrow evening.

Footnotes:  
1. Historically, the 2011 tornado season really was particularly bad (worst in history for number of tornadoes spawned in a 24-hour period). Joplin is the famous case, but Georgia, Tennessee and Alabama saw some pretty terrible weather too.

In the War of 1812, the British invasion force was driven from Washington DC by a severe tornado that tossed cannons through the air, killed soldiers and civilians, put out the fires they had lit and severely damaged their fleet.

2. There was a plan at around that time to use chicken putrescence as feedstock for commercial pigs and catfish. It never worked that well, so they started using it to make perfume and dogfood instead.


	13. Chapter 11: Emancipation

_And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes: and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus saith unto them, Loose him, and let him go._  
-John 11:43-44

* * *

***interlude*  
6 June, 2011  
North Carolina Research Campus  
Kannapolis, North Carolina**

After the disastrous January counter-attacks, most surviving American military forces did what they probably should have done from the start: disperse across the country and embed themselves as cadres in the growing militia movement. Their experience, skill and weaponry proved invaluable, especially in areas where such wasn't already common.

The military research teams, however, were something of an exception. They stayed together and often coalesced when possible. They established semi-permanent bases where they could and moved around as needed. Kannapolis, North Carlonia—latest home for survivors of the Research Triangle and as far away as Orlando, Florida and Fredrick, Maryland—had become a cluster of camouflage and labcoats. It was a bastion of civilization, with a general level of technology that members of the Manhattan Project wouldn't have considered overly quaint. Among their many projects, first and foremost on everyone's mind was getting their children back.

They had already lost a few hundred of the harnessed kids to shock (and a few dozen researchers to madness, drugs and suicide). It wasn't so much that nothing they tried ever worked, just that none of it worked very well.[1] Yank the things off and about one in a hundred survived. Smash them and one in ten survived. Try sawing or snipping them off and one in five made it. Cauterization was tried, and abandoned after several patients caught on fire.[2] They had moved on to drilling until they finally realized why the kids had been going into shock.

"I can't believe how long it took us to figure out they were drugged." said James Tagliabue, pediatrician turned ancillary medic, as he moved from bed to bed in the post-operations observation ward, assessing the condition of the still-mostly-unconscious children.

"Easy enough to overlook;" responded one of his colleagues, Special Forces Medic Seargent Gleason, "it was invisible in the autopsies and they've gotten so used to running from one failed procedure to another that they didn't think to look any deeper. The physiology doesn't at all resemble opiod dependency, even if the treatment does; it could easily be something else."[3]

"What do you think we'll do when we run out of Buprenorphine?"

"Any of the more powerful analgesics should do. We mainly use that because of availability, really; not many people going into detox these days, even if they need to."

"I would suggest large-scale domestic poppy production if I didn't think it would cut into staple foods, though planting some may become an option later."

"You can grow poppy in America?"

"Papaver somniferum? Oh yes. We had lots of neighbours who kept some in their gardens…eh, for ornamental purposes only, of course." said Tragibue, smirking.

"Hippy." muttered Gleason, also smirking.

"If nothing else," she continued, "we can break out the Naltrexone and see just where the resemblances to conventional opiates begin and end. Opiod replacement therapy is the best solution we've found so far, but not necessarily the only one."

"Question is, now that we have a treatment which gives us a 90% survival rate, how many young lives do we sacrifice trying to find something better?"

For Tagliabue and Gleason, both parents themselves, a question like that was one that would eat at them for the remainder of the war and quite possibly the remainder of their lives.

* * *

**8 June, 2011**

NCRC was disbanding it's pediatric ward, or at least most of it. The staff would disperse across the country to oversee deharnessing procedures and teach what they had learned to others. Most of these instructions would have to be sent in person—with radio still unreliable and telegraph lines often lost to what they assumed was enemy action, news had mostly gone back to traveling at the speed of a galloping horse.

"Blue Mountain Coffee!?" exclaimed James "Talk about a generous sendoff; the used grounds from this stuff is probably worth it's weight in gold."

"Yeah, I'm sure our sentries will be happy seeing ranger dip[4] again." said Gleason, in between vigorous sips. "You know, I spent much of my youth on the family's coffee plantation in Jamaica. It was a good youth, apart from the feral dogs that our parents said would eat us if we went into the woods."

"Yeah, we had wild dogs kill our chickens every now and then. So, what happens now?"

"Here? Increased emphasis on the enemy's nanoengineering, power supply and weapons technology. Mostly, they'll be refocusing on the possible mutagenic properties of the harnesses."

"Hah. I thought we had already confirmed that the harness are absolutely, irrefutably not turning our kids into mutants."

He got up and put his breakfast plate in the nearby sink, offering to do likewise for hers. He was going to miss running water.

"Um, yes, but… I guess they just want to… triple check it." answered Gleason in faux-uncertainty. The official line may well have been true, but it was obvious to everyone that they themselves weren't sure. "Oh, I don't know; not my department."

They wished the best to whoever's department it was, but as the difficulties of their own research had proved, you could only do so much by giving pre-Atomic Age answers to post-Invasion Age questions.

"So, this is goodbye then, Sergeant Gleason?"

"I guess it is, Dr Tagliabue. Our team's heading across the Appalachians into the Great Lakes Region. We've heard rumours that the president is hiding out somewhere in between and we want to check them out. What about you?"

"Boston. Tempted though I am to go look for my sister in Atlanta and loath though I am to go back and deal with Mike Harris, my place is there. I'll tell him what I know and head back to Maine. He'll probably say he figured it out all by himself."

"Well, if it gets too cold for you this winter, you might consider Charleston. Avery's people are heading down there; she says there's a 1937-vintage Waco AQC-6 and a rather lucrative business offer waiting for her."

"Not the best of times for prospective pilots, is it?"

"Well you wouldn't think so but… old, slow, simple, low-flying wooden airplane. Maybe it won't show up on their radar. She'll only know when they start shooting, but that's Avery for you. I have to wonder where they got the fuel for it; it's got to be hard to come by even if the thing was converted to run off standard gasoline."

* * *

Footnotes:

1. Remember in the pilot episode, where they find a dead kid with a harness yanked off? If people are still trying that six months after the war started, they must have thought that it had a (miniscule) chance of working. People tend to go for long shots when the lives of their children are on the line.

There is another possibility. Remember in Chapter 4 where I pointed out that humanity should have found out about harnessed skitters far earlier than some six to nine months after the start of the war? Maybe some of them did, thus Pope's early assertion that Tom would be better off shooting harnessed children.

2. This marks a significant departure from the series, but in my version of Falling Skies they use hack saws and bar/bolt-cutters to get the spikes out, not cutting torches. Because, looking back on it, that was really kind of stupid.

3. I'm no pharmacologist, but what we see happening to deharnessed children doesn't strike me as characteristic of opioid withdrawal syndrome, which is seldom fatal in and of itself. Most detox-related deaths are due to either suicide or a negative interaction with other administered medications. It seems to have more in common with barbiturate or benzodiazepine withdrawal, which can be deadly if done cold turkey.

4. Take a good wad of coffee grounds and stick between your teeth and gums for the intoxicating effect. I guess it could be seen as the American answer to khat.


	14. Chapter 12: Here We Go Again

or, **Rail Duty II**

_"The only way to reduce the number of nuclear weapons is to use them."_  
-Rush Limbaugh

***Diary Entry: Sunday Afternoon, May 29, 2011***

Church was nice. Higher-than-usual attendance too, though I think many of our congregants were partially motivated by a desire to get out of the sun. We have a little tent city built up in the kudzu and amongst the woods on the southern and eastern edges of the cemetery, bounding the industrial and residential developments where we've seen a number of delays in our offensive.

If it gets as hot next month as I expect it will, I think I'm going to go back to my coal plant, wrap up in my hammock and leave a sign up saying "Do Not Disturb Until October".

The Western Assault began last Thursday, with a broad, steady offensive from Below Arthur B Langford Parkway all the way up to Donald Lee Hollowell Parkway. It's a big grab, and it looks like they're eager to make up for recently-lost ground.

The Alabama Expeditionary Force made their debut this week. Three of their regiments have taken part in the action and from what I hear they are performing admirably. Something to be said for people who fight spiders once and then go out of their way to do it again… say what you will about their sanity, but if they're still alive it surely means that they have something in the way of skills.

***Diary Entry: Wednesday Evening, June 1, 2011***

[Sentence illegible.] I know [that I] haven't been writing much. Too hot to writ[e]. This kind of heat turns the more[mere?] act of thinking into a significant [ph]ysical exertion.

[…and it just gets worse from there. I had to rewrite a this entry, and a few others, due to all the problems with spelling and general incoherence.]

Had to make three round trips from my foxhole to our new Company HQ on Casey's Hill today: half a mile away and 150 feet up. One of the highest points in Atlanta and great place to set one's observation posts and anti-air defenses, not such a great place to visit.

I've been assigned a bicycle again, which helps a lot... when going downhill. What more can I say? It never pees on me.

You do get some good views of our old stomping grounds, the Tillford and Inman rail yards, from up there.

***Diary Entry: Thursday Morning, June 2, 2011***

Woke up to a sound I haven't heard in quite awhile: artillery. Someone must have found or built some rockets and launched them at Centennial Park. They actually had pretty good aim, but didn't seem to do much damage.

Well, actually they did plenty of damage… to themselves. We can still see the blue-tinged mushroom floating somewhere around Northside Drive in Channing Valley and Collier Hills, a mile and a half from my foxhole. What ever would possess someone to try a stunt like that?

We've been told that their nukes are relatively clean, and if they give off any radiation at all it's going to be short-lived (something like gamma rays, I would assume) and outpaced by the blast radius. While fallout is still a danger, for the same reason the fallout from 9/11 was a danger, radiation poisoning is not one of our concerns.

Still, I hope to God they don't make us go anywhere near that new crater. I hear we're going to move back into Hill's Park today, which is good.

***Diary Entry: Sunday Afternoon, June 5, 2011***

I followed Major Clifton's advice on reintroducing our RPK's in the auto-rifleman role, and opinions over the last few weeks have been mostly positive. He says our problem was that we were using them as downgraded light-machine guns instead of upgraded assault rifles, and with the change in doctrine it looks like they'll make excellent weapons.

Speaking of heavy weapons, these day I'm seeing a lot of M-2's, Mk-19s and other crew served guns mounted on Russian-style wheeled carriages[1]. I think I'm going to do something like that with my M-14. It gains ten pounds on a hot day, with two more for every mile I march.

Fortunately, in light of the heavy fighting that we experienced to take this neighborhood, they're giving us a day of rest and a chance to honor our dead. We had a joint service with members the 37th Assault Company and the Atmarga Column in Hill's Park Baptist church. The church couldn't hold us all at once, but that was okay. One of the walls was blown out so we set up some makeshift pews on the outside and had a semi-open-air service.

Half expected them to use the current weather conditions as an excuse to preach about Hell. Nope. Scripture reading was mostly about Joseph and the Coat of Many Colors, and the subject was perseverance in hard times.

"Must Jesus bear the cross alone, and all the world go free?"

***Diary Entry: Sunday Evening, June 5, 2011***

Secured the residential portions of Hill's Park, and dug in on the industrial areas in case of Spider counter-attacks.

We move on to Tilford yard tonight. The 10th Georgia and 3rd Alabama Militia Regiment have reached the intersection of Hollywood Road and Perry Boulevard and they hope to link up with us by tomorrow evening.

One last note before I go on go to help bring in tomorrow's water rations: we recovered more dead spiders. The Men In Black will no doubt be around soon to take them away from us, but before that could happen Skitter decided to cut off some of their fingers and start wearing them as a necklace.

Ew…

***Diary Entry: Wednesday Morning, June 8, 2011***

I think that I actually had a hand in digging this trench that I'm going to use for today's siesta.

Been eating a good bit of lobster lately, which still tastes disturbingly like real lobster.

Found a band of dead civilians during an otherwise-uneventful patrol, way out in Blandtown. We don't think they were militia, more likely free agents from elsewhere in the city, hoping our area would be less picked-over than wherever they came from.

Dekalb County plates on their trucks, and purple blood patterns on one of the hoods makes us think they'd found a dead Spider and tried to strap the thing down like a slain deer. Must have really angered whatever found them, because you seldom see harnassable children deliberately gunned down by Robots, and their's clearly were.

I know the spiders are becoming a little more reckless, but desecrating their corpses like that? Not a good idea.

***Diary Entry: Friday Evening, June 10, 2011***

It's been a long struggle, but we've almost made our way back to the old trench lines from two months ago. We have most the rail yards, but can't really call them secure because of the sheer volume of tangled metal and hiding places.

I almost bought it yesterday when I didn't check my corner good enough and one of them came leaping out of an overturned train car. You'd be surprised what small spaces they can spring-load themselves into, worse than having them drop from the ceiling on you.

The Atmarga Column has been pulled off the line for unspecified "special duties" and they've been replaced by an Alabama unit who's name escapes me. I'll miss them but it's probably for the best, as cavalry don't work that well in this kind of terrain.

***Diary Entry: Monday Afternoon, June 13, 2011***

We just got news of something we've been praying for since this all began: they've found a method of deharnessing captured children. Colonel Berry arrived at our encampment and personally delivered the message. They filled our medics in on the removal procedures, and told us to gather up anything that can cut steel and keep an eye out for opiates.

The first will be easy: a matter of looting the nearest hardware store or one of the workshops in the rail yards.

Opiates are going to be a little harder, as supplies of medicinally-useful ones tend to dry up quickly. If alcohol would work then we wouldn't have a problem but otherwise I think we'll be rummaging through a lot of opium dens in the future.

***Diary Entry: Monday Night, June 13, 2011***

Sitting on my little rooftop perch, I am witness to two very disturbing scenes: in the west I see the blue luminescence of at least two new mushroom clouds, and in the east I can see the shimmer of one the biggest robot formations I've seen this month gathering beneath the glow of the rising full moon.

I think we are in for a very long night.

Footnotes:  
1. These were pretty popular in the interwar years. Wheeled mounts were issued by the countries that used them for both the M-1917 and the Vickers machine gun, but it seems that only the Eastern Bloc continued to widely use them after World War II. Never understood why.


	15. Chapter 13: Bubbleheads

_"A ten million dollar house, and the roof leaks."_  
-Unknown Submariner[1]

* * *

***interlude***  
**North Atlantic Ocean**  
**1 January, 2011**

When the spaceships came, America's subs went to sea. Many were only given skeleton crews, with non-essential personnel dragooned into the Shore Patrol as part of the government's questionable policy of using military personnel to maintain order in areas shadowed by the alien craft. At the time, there was surprisingly little sense of alarm or urgency amongst the remaining crews or their commanders; it was generally seen as a more otherworldly version of heading for the deep in preparation for a hurricane.

That changed when the skies fell. The plan, in the event of war, had been to use their ballistic and cruise missiles to destroy the ships in a series of massive salvos against individual coastal cities. The EMP and jamming had made communication, coordination and over-the-horizon engagement a bit more difficult, but these problems had been accounted for somewhat and the birds flew irregardless.

Even with the conventional-only loadout, collateral damage to the cities below had been expected to be enormous. Turns out they would have the opposite problem: unlike the DOD's many sad, fraudulent missile defense boondoggles, the Espheni's Star Wars program seemed to actually work, and most of the missiles fell to laser, plasma, and slug long before they reached their marks.

For the most part, the rest of the world saw similar outcomes. A few nations, even a few who weren't supposed to have them (among them Israel, Iran, and to everyone's surprise Brazil), had decided to use nuclear weapons on their own cities—or the cities of others; using the invasion as an excuse to "help" someone whom they just happened to hate (among them India, Pakistan, and to everyone's surprise Turkey). But that only served to scatter radioactive material over wherever the missiles were intercepted.

In the opening days of the war, the true stand-out missile technology was nothing more than swarms of giant metal or cement blocks with fins and rockets stuck on them. The Chinese and others had long been working on methods to neutralize America's carrier groups, and the alien ships presented a target that was bigger than most aircraft carriers, slower, and easier to aim at. The DF-21's and other "carrier killers" didn't perform as well as many proponents and alarmists had feared, but it was enough to destroy the fleets over Shiraz, Iran and several dozen Eastern Chinese cities. Sympathetic explosions from the magazines and power supply, in turn, destroyed much of those cities and millions of their inhabitants.

And so the submarine attacks had been a failure and the common conjecture was that the subs had died in the attempt. That, however, was not entirely true.

* * *

**Off the coast of Sørvágur, Faeroe Islands**  
**15 June, 2011**

The waves weren't crashing, the wind wasn't howling, the sky wasn't an inky grey to match the inky green of the tempestuous ocean. No, it was actually a pretty nice day in the North Atlantic when the USS Jimmy Carter broke the surface for the first time in six months.

Pacing the conning tower, Captain Chad Coleman did his best not to step in any of the puke left by his more nauseated crewmen. While most of them had welcomed the chance to see sunlight, some had displayed physical and psychological aversions to the outside world. Things like that would doubtless be common in this new world.

Three hours topside and they weren't dead yet, that was a good sign. Anyone not essential to the ascent had already been evacuated, courtesy of a minisub that the SEALs left strapped to their sub. It had come in handy in their previous reconnoiters, picking up valuable information and often volunteers as well. Coleman hadn't been topside before (no senior officers on away teams or leading patrols; this wasn't Star Wars), but the fact that people were eager to go live on a submarine to escape it was a good indication of how bad things were.

The Faeroes would turn out to be their most pleasant visit yet. Food was tight but no one seemed to be starving. There had been very little alien activity on the islands and it seemed like it would have been a nice safe haven if only it had the faculties to deal with subs. Their minisub had finally burned out its motor while they were there, but there had been rumours about a place where they might could go to repair it.

* * *

**Dora 1 Submarine Pen**  
**Trondheim, Norway**  
**19 June, 2011**

Norway was an absolute monarchy again, albeit an enlightened, rump monarchy. Newly-crowned King Haakan VIII found himself ruling over a nation of 4.6 million subjects and an army of 138,000 personnel. They had done well, all things considered. In fact, out of all the European nations invaded by the "styggedyr", only the Swiss had done better. The grueling winter months had not been a serious problem; the Kingdom of Norway had stashed away a surprisingly large amount of food, supplies and weaponry. Many wondered what they had been planning to do with it all, but few complained about the fact that they had it.

Norway was also the world's preeminent nuclear power. Orphaned boomers from across the Atlantic had sailed into the old Nazi sub pens and the King had cut a deal with most of them: their missiles, warheads, other high-tech equipment and occasionally the entire ships for food, basing rights and maintenance. It was unlikely that any of it could be immediately useful, but the radiomen were certain that the alien jamming system was growing weaker, which might indicate a weakening in their defensive capabilities. And if the missile shield stays up indefinitely, well, there are many ways to deliver a small nuclear devise.

Coleman and most of his crew wanted to make their way back to America eventually, but they could use a mechanical overall and some refurbished supplies first. He had traded a good portion of his weapons stocks for them, but it didn't seem like a grievous loss. He did have one proviso: he would keep a few of his nuclear-tipped Tomahawks, and threatened to use them if they made too many "USS Peanut Farmer" jokes in his presence.

"No, King's Bay is completely gone." said Captain Coleman, as he and a few other officers gathered around the bryggehus drinking the strange brew of Scandinavia. "Nothing but a giant glassy fjord dug into the coastline. Same story for the most part in Norfolk, New London, Halifax, anywhere else worth visiting."

"Same deal in Russia." noted Dmitri Losenko, commander of the Typhoon-class Dmitriy Donskoy. "The bases at Murmansk and Severomorsk are gone, they say Baltic bases are too. Sevastopol occupied, and they even glassed Balaklava sub pens. Wonder why they did that but didn't bother with the Nazi pens… doesn't seem fair."

"Closer to a major city. Abandoned more recently? Either way it's a shame; I always wanted to go there."

King Haakan VIII stepped through the door at that moment and poured a mug. A former navy officer; he spent much of his time interacting with the crews and tsk-tsking their inevitable SALT violations, when he wasn't getting much closer to the fighting in Oslo than his advisers would wish

"Oh it's still there, and intact, just underneath a melted mountain." said Losenko. "You could probably still get in there, just not your sub. Do you know anything about the old French pens?"

"Nah."

"I'd say at least one of them is still standing, if only because we've yet to have any French subs in our harbors." said the King. "So you plan on leaving within the week? I understand, even if I am sorry to hear it."

"Yeah, this is still a land war and we'd much rather do it on our own soil. We'll be back in March as planned, if possible, if any of us are still alive then."

Captain Losenko chuckled. "Surely we'll both be back, as long as they don't send any Krakens after us."[2]

* * *

Footnotes:  
1. Quote is clearly showing its age, though apparently it's still a problem in deep dives.

Chapter written at the request of Just a Crazy-Man, with advice from Stalkere, Thresher, and Nikephoros. Initially I was going to say that the kid in the pilot was right and the magical EMP short-circuited the subs, but they did present some compelling reasons why most of the nuclear subs would survive an alien invasion.

A submarine traveling at any significant depth would be very hard to detect without an expansive sensor system or dedicated anti-submarine assets, neither of which have the Espheni shown an ability or inclination to deploy. And even if they could find one, they would have a great deal of trouble destroying it.

Kinetic strikes and orbital bombardment would cause catastrophic tsunamis, and the magical EMP would have to be very magical indeed to get through hundreds of feet of salt water and harm vessels that were built to withstand mid-yield thermonuclear depth charges. Moreover, how much effort are the Espheni going to expend trying to hunt down about a hundred surviving nuclear subs? Not much, I would think.

So ultimately a few are lost when they come up to fire their cruise missiles, but most crash dive in time to avoid being engaged. The subs went to the bottom for as long as they could and the crews have squirreled away their missiles for a time when Espheni defenses have degraded enough for them to be used again.

2. I was tempted to have a Terminator-style Kraken chasing after the USS Jimmy Carter, but it doesn't really fit in with Espheni strategy as we've seen it so far, and that kind of action doesn't translate well to non-visual media.

Actually, this entire chapter has been difficult for me, as I knew nothing about subs and very little about navies (never a big interest of mine), or oceans (only seen it a couple of times and it was more than a little terrifying), or really even water (can't swim).


End file.
